Asymptote, an online award-winning magazine is campaigning against President Trump’s travel ban by fundraising to commission new work and new translations from the seven predominantly Muslim countries affected by the ban.
The magazine is trying to raise $30,000 for the project as part of April’s issue of the magazine, and with a week to go, there’s $17,000 left to raise to make the project happen.
Well known authors such as Yann Martel and Junot Diaz have publically given their support to the fundraiser and organisers say 20% of all proceeds to US non-profit American Civil Liberties Union or British Charity Refugees Welcome will help the cause.
The team at Asymptote will begin editorial research into works from these areas, and commissioning a minimum of two new works and translations from each of the countries affected by the ban. These countries are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
The magazine bases each issue around a theme and when they heard of the ban, they decided this month’s theme would be to help minority language writers in these areas who are being oppressed.
Asymptote is certainly a diverse publication, to date it has published new work from 109 countries and 90 languages by writers and translators, many well known names such as J. M Coetzee, and Haruki Murakami. The magazine won the LBF Award for International Literary Translation Initiative in 2015 and publishes quarterly issues, a podcast, a daily blog and a fortnightly newsletter.
The fundraising project runs until 21st February and should you wish to contribute you can find all the details on the fundraising page here or check out the Asymptoe Journal here
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