An independent, youth-run literary magazine from India and beyond! Love for the literary world with no borders.

Spill the Chai 2026 is a two-day online community event hosted by The Chai Magazine, designed to create a space for honest conversations, creative expression, and shared experiences. REGISTER HERE: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc_Syt5NX9ZSrzdU6lSk-9qgju99UHKLNXlWKPCA1QjavWLsQ/viewform

The Chai Magazine is a youth-run literary magazine that was founded in India, but has staff and contributors from all over the globe! Brewed with the spirit of storytelling, art, and expression, Chai releases quarterly themed anthologies.

We bring together everyone- any age, any gender, any caste, any religion- from around the world to celebrate voices that deserve to be heard. 

Rooted in the warmth of community and creativity, we aim to create a space where ideas flow freely, like conversations over a cup of chai.

Submissions for our Substack blog are always open!


The Chai Magazine

Welcome to Volume 3 of The Chai Magazine's anthology, "As The World Was Made!" The theme for this contest is “Vayu”, a word that translates to “Air”.

Rather than focusing on wind or the sky alone, this theme explores air as a space of lightness, drifting, and disappearance. Air holds what cannot be grasped but is constantly present: passing thoughts, daydreams, fading voices, and moments that fly away before we can fully hold them.


Vayu invites writers to think about the fleeting and the intangible… the feeling of being lost in a daydream, the softness of weightless moments, or the subtle ways things vanish from our lives. It may appear in drifting memories, unfinished conversations, quiet departures, or the sense of something slowly dissolving into the background.


Writers are encouraged to interpret air as lightness, imagination, disappearance, and the fragile spaces between presence and absence.

☕️ Each person can submit a total of 2 pieces. 
Either 1 in poetry and 1 in prose. OR 2 in either poetry or prose. 
Any extra entry shall be deemed disqualified. 
Fill the form again for 2nd entry in the contest.

Vayu (Air) - "As The World Was Made" Anthology, part 3

Spill the Chai 2026 is a two-day online community event hosted by The Chai Magazine, designed to create a space for honest conversations, creative expression, and shared experiences.


Built around the theme “Let’s Be Honest: We’re Still Figuring It Out,” the event acknowledges that life rarely follows a perfect plan. Whether it’s navigating careers, relationships, identity, creativity, or personal growth, most of us are still learning, evolving, and figuring things out along the way.


Spill the Chai invites participants to explore these experiences through dialogue, storytelling, performance, and reflection. The event combines interactive sessions, competitions, and conversations with guest speakers to create a welcoming space where people can speak honestly and connect with others going through similar journeys.

Spill The Chai: Online Workshop and Contest!

Mini-Issue 3: Manchala
We seek raw, untamed pieces that capture chaos, youth, freedom, longing and restless hearts. Show us wandering souls, beauty of being unapologetically alive. Let your work feel wild, moving, intimate, and impossible to hold down.... forever searching for something more.

12+ Age, All nationalities, gender, religions, caste, etc. MAIN CRITERIA IS TO BE HUMAN, and no AI-Humans are allowed here- so please shoo away.

Manchala

The theme for this contest is “Jal”, a word translating to “Water”.<div></div><div>A theme rooted in monsoon evenings, petrichor-soaked memories, overflowing clouds, muddy streets, healing, longing and the strange comfort rain brings with it.</div><div></div><div></div><div>We invite poetry and prose that feels drenched in emotion, nature, softness, melancholy, and renewal. Let your words flow like rivers after drought, like storms waiting to happen, like rain washing old grief away.</div>

Jal (Water) 'As the world was made' Anthology part 4

A theme rooted in the infinite possibilities that surround us, the vastness of the world we inhabit, and the strange realisation that while we are the main character of our own lives, we are only one small story among billions.<div></div><div>We invite poetry and prose that explores possibility, distance, dreams, existence, perspective, freedom, and the unknown. Write about the worlds we carry within ourselves, the lives unfolding beyond our own, the distance between people, and the endlessness of everything that could still happen.</div><div></div><div>Because perhaps Vyom is a reminder that we are small… but the space around us is infinite.

Because perhaps Vyom is a reminder that we are small… but the space around us is infinite.</div><div></div><div>☕️ Each person can submit a total of 2 pieces. </div><div>Either 1 in poetry and 1 in prose. OR 2 in either poetry or prose. </div><div>Any extra entry shall be deemed disqualified. </div><div>Fill the form again for 2nd entry in the contest.</div><div></div><div>☕️ Guidelines for Submission:</div><div>Poetry: Maximum 75 lines, no minimum limit.</div><div>Prose: Minimum 200 words, maximum 1000 words.</div><div>Each entry must be original and your own creation.</div><div>Entries must be previously NOT published (not online, in print, or on social media).</div><div>No plagiarism or copying from others.</div><div>No AI-generated content; work must be fully human-written.</div><div>Submissions may be in English or if another language (then translation in English is required).</div>

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Vyom (Space) - Volume V of 'As the world was made' Anthology part 5