How might we care for lands transformed by centuries of industrial development? In the context of long-term environmental contamination, what well-established and emerging practices might be able to coexist? New relational habitats are taking shape at the edge of wetlands ravaged by the toxic promises of the battery industry; grassroots initiatives strive to map out the contours of factory emissions, circulating information and mobilizing citizens. Attentive to the effects of colonialism and capitalism’s intersecting iterations of violence on life and agency in “a world in ruins” (Tsing, 2015), this open call seeks texts from the field that reflect on various forms of solidarity, sensitivity, and cohabitation in the face of industrialized spaces and territories.

This issue aims to be relational in nature. As such, we look forward to receiving correspondences of all sorts, epistolary, freeform, or multi-author, from texts chronicling collaborative experiences (long-term or occasional), to choral pieces or other conversational forms (real or imagined). We invite writing anchored in specific sites, be it the forest floor or the gravel of a quarry, and in the gestures of everyday work and land defence; texts that examine the granular level of material relationships between places, their inhabitants, and globalized networks of commerce.

We are particularly interested in receiving texts on citizen- and/or artist-led initiatives to combat extractive and polluting industries, on the relationships between different communities and generations, and between Indigenous and non- Indigenous actors. “It is quite time to reconcile the hunter and the peasant,” as Anishinaabekwe activist Winona LaDuke said more than twenty years ago now. LaDuke’s appeal invites us to reflect on forms of reconciliation that refuse to flatten difference into a pacifying status quo (beneficial to industrial interests), but rather that foster intergenerational accountability in settler communities with respect to environment and cultural dispossession stemming from industrial development of the land.

In keeping with our commitment to artists’ writing, and in a broad and inclusive spirit, we at Cigale encourage experimental, critical and poetic forms, as well as texts that foreground the role of art practices as motors of public discourse, the free circulation of underrepresented points of view, and social and environmental justice for all. With local engagement at heart, we are particularly interested in proposals relating to the territory known as Québec, but are certainly open to texts focusing on other geographical areas as well.

Proposals for texts (300 words) should be sent to info@cigale-cigale.ca by August 1, 2025. Selected submissions will be announced during the month of August 2025. We are able to pay a minimum fee of $150 CAD per published submission. Final texts will be approximately 1,000–3,000 words in length.

Please contact us for more information, or any other questions: Laure Bourgault and AM Trépanier, editorial team, info@cigale-cigale.ca