The Arabian Stories project organizes an annual literary competition to promote contemporary Arab literature called “A Thousand Nights and One Dawn.” The idea which drove the creators of Arabian Stories to set up this competition arose from their conviction that the true challenge faced by the Arab world today lies in the re-formation of its collective identity. The objective of this contest is to create a space for contemporary Arab thought within our globalized world while allowing it to get transmitted. This is why the project’s promoters, all professionals in the world of translation, believe it is essential for us to have access to works of literature and thought through translations into other languages, highlighting the different ways of understanding certain notions, as well as the place they hold within the various systems used to examine reality. 

Further information on the format and results of the first edition at: http://arabianstories.com

To help with the organization of this second edition of the competition (the time period for sending in works as submissions to the competition is planned to begin on September 15, 2016), Arabian Stories has launched a crowdfunding campaign for support, which you can check out on Kickstarter. Through this contest, the project expects to receive short stories with lengths which are supposed to range from 300 to 500 words, written in Standard Arabic by Arab authors, making reference to some specific place located in the Arab world. In addition to awarding prizes to the contest winners, the project’s team has committed to translating at least thirty of the stories into English and Spanish, and to publishing them on its website. In addition to this, they will translate one-third of all the works submitted. Two books will be published, as well, in both electronic format and on paper, with the best thirty stories from each of the editions of this literary competition. 

If you would like to know more about the Arabian Stories team, please click on this link: http://arabianstories.com/es/team/

The name of the image’s author is Shaden Khalil. This is his story: http://arabianstories.com/es/humanity-the-gist/