Call for Submissions: The Tapestry, Migration Literary Award 2026

Gallery of Human Migration

Ester Crocetta, I’M MIGRATION, 2025. The Gallery of Human Migration’s iconic sculpture.

The Tapestry – Curated Voices of Migration

A non-competitive international literary recognition and publication initiative, open worldwide

Submission Deadline: August 31, 2026, 11:59pm ET

Every migration story begins before the first step is taken—in a longing, a fear, a letter, a dream. It continues long after arrival, in the people left behind, in the communities reshaped by welcome, in the children who inherit a language they never had to learn to cross.

The Tapestry is the 2026 edition of the Gallery’s Migration Literary Award: a non-competitive international literary recognition and publication initiative that honours personal and ancestral migration stories through curated publication and long-term visibility. The call for submissions opens March 31, 2026.

This is not a competition. It is an act of curation—and of care. Every selected voice is honoured equally. Each story becomes a thread. Together, they form something larger than any one voice.

Stories are grouped into three narrative positions:

Staying – the family member who watches from the window long after the car has disappeared. The community whose fabric shifts, quietly and irrevocably, when a life departs.

Crossing – the one who carries two worlds at once: what is left behind and what has not yet been found.

Receiving – the neighbour, the colleague, the society into which a migrant arrives. The friction and the grace. The quiet ways a community is permanently reshaped by the arrival of someone new.

Project Requirements

The Gallery’s four guiding themes—Beckoning, Beginning, Becoming, Belonging—invite writers to inhabit their stories more fully. They are questions, not constraints.

• Beckoning – What called someone to move? What pulled, pushed, or whispered ‘go’?
• Beginning – What did departure feel like from the inside? What was left? What was carried?
• Becoming – How did the crossing change those involved? What was gained, what was lost, what was remade?
• Belonging – Where, if anywhere, does the story come to rest? What does home mean now?

Not every story will move through all four. Let the themes guide your reflection, not constrain it.

Eligibility

• Open internationally to any writer who has reached the age of majority in their province, territory, or country
• Professional and previously unpublished writers are equally welcome
• Work must not have been previously published in a journal, magazine, anthology, or book at the time of submission
• Work shared on personal blogs or social media is eligible
• One submission per author

Sabrina Aureli, Oltre l’orizzonte, Becoming, 2026. Courtesy Gallery of Human Migration.

Recognition

There is no financial compensation associated with this recognition program. Selected stories are honoured through:

• Publication in the Gallery’s Stories Collection, a dedicated Tapestry page, newsletter, and social media channels
• A curatorial note contextualizing the work within the 2026 selection
• Long-term visibility within the Gallery’s living collection
• A digital certificate featuring the Gallery’s iconic sculpture

The Gallery is also exploring the possibility of a formal digital and print anthology of selected works.

Selection Process

Stories are read and selected by the 2026 curatorial jury—a group of writers, scholars, and cultural practitioners brought together not to judge, but to curate. Their task is to identify voices that, in relation to one another, form a coherent and meaningful collection: one that honours the full range of migration experience across perspective, geography, emotion, and form.

Jury Chair: Professor Roberto Perin, historian, immigration specialist, and former Chair of the 2025 jury. Additional jury members will be announced in the coming months.

Results announced on November 1, 2026.

Key Dates

• Call for Submissions Opens: March 31, 2026
• Submission Deadline: August 31, 2026, 11:59pm ET
• Results Announced: November 1, 2026

Submission Requirements

• One short story, written in English, strictly between 3,000 and 4,500 words
• Up to three poems may be incorporated within the body of your story
• Up to three visual artworks (photographs, drawings, or other visual work) may be submitted as a separate file; visuals enrich the story but do not replace word count
• Work must not have been previously published in a journal, magazine, anthology, or book at the time of submission
• One submission per author
• A non-refundable administrative fee of CAD $25 is required to complete your submission

How to Submit

Submit your story using the online submission form.

Please read the 2026 Official Rules and 2026 FAQs before submitting.

Submission Deadline: August 31, 2026, 11:59pm ET

Additional information or questions, please contact:
events@galleryofhumanmigration.org

Gallery of Human Migration
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Countless journeys, one humanity.

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Images Descriptions:
1) A photograph of a white ceramic sculpture with smooth curved forms, displayed on a white base against a neutral background.
2) An image of the Eternal Flame at Parliament Hill. A woman on a bicycle, a girl with flowers, people walking toward the Parliament buildings.