Narratives

Hive is an online platform that publishes the works of cultural practitioners engaging, examining and speculating across systems and issues to unearth nuance, complexity and possibilities. This Spring, Hive is proud to welcome Hira Cheema, a freelance writer, and aspiring novelist with a background in English and Creative Writing from NYU as Narratives Editor. Her writing focuses on merging political events with fiction, providing key insights and guidance for Hive’s lines of research.

Over the next few years, Hive will undertake three overlapping lines of research; Community and collaborative artistic and activist practices and projects; an examination of the social contract and its present realities; and lastly, Hive will undertake to examine the components and making of constituent power, constitution and reconstitution. To this end, we are expanding the mandate of our magazine to include a Narratives section, which we believe will provide a necessary link to the non-fiction we publish. The aim is to create and support a form of dialogue through which individual experiences and perspectives can be explored. We believe in using the power of writing to examine cracks in foundations and start conversations. We believe in smaller acts leading to greater change. In that vein we are looking for narratives that tell the stories of these small acts and of the seemingly insignificant. Narratives of all subjects and in all forms and genres are welcome – including fiction, creative non-fiction, interviews, and elements of the basics of research.

See our most recent publication here, featuring the work of Sakina Fakhri, a novelist, screenwriter, and filmmaker. “Mistranslation in Images” is a powerful, thought-provoking short story about the grave consequences of a young man’s single, careless mistake. It is a broader, satirical commentary on global political dynamics and achieves a rather mesmerizing effect as it takes us through the protagonist’s mind and loops through scenes tangential to the imminent war.

We hope you enjoy our first Narrative. Be sure to apply to our current Open Call here.