My name is Jood AlThukair, and I am the founder and editor-in-chief of Sumou Magazine. I am a 19-year-old student who is studying English Literature and Linguistics at King Saud University. I established Sumou Magazine in the summer of 2018. Before Sumou, I had an online, all-female writing club called Masked Saudis. It focused on improving emerging writers’ work by assigning two topics per month, and at the end of each month, the group members had to give feedback on every member’s piece. In order to expand the small community of Masked Saudis and to explicitly give opportunities and recognition for creatives—both male and female— I decided to create Sumou to help emerging artists and writers share their work in an online, creative platform

Since Sumou is a biannual magazine, we are currently working on the first issue, All the Things We Don’t Feel. We try to include works in both Arabic and English to balance between our mother tongue and the English language. The goal is to provide a platform in which creatives can express themselves. Sumou is a safe space that welcomes new ideas and will remain that way, since it is built for the community. 

One of the most important goals behind this project is to reach a wider audience and become more well-known in the art community. Sumou seeks to help emerging artists and writers get recognized by the audience. Another aim is to accept diverse submissions that are not solely presented through the medium of art and literature in order to provide space to those who have different interests they want to discuss. As I mentioned before, Sumou is a biannual magazine, which means that we will be accepting submissions to no-theme issues all year long. Lastly, opinion articles in regard to culture, media, history, etc. are welcomed and will be featured on the website of the magazine.