Gallery of Human Migration

08/26/2026

Her mother spoke about war the way someone else might describe the weather. A person shot here. A body carried past there. God's plan, she would say. Move on.

Morsal Yakuby grew up in Toronto holding those stories before she ever wrote them down. When she finally did, "Thoughts of a Distant Night" earned an Honourable Mention in the Gallery's inaugural Migration Literary Award. And it cost her something to write it.

Read the full conversation, "The Language Between," and hear what she'd say to anyone still deciding if their story belongs:
https://galleryofhumanmigration.org/the-language-between/

Her answer might be exactly what you need to hear before August 31.

The Tapestry, the 2026 edition of the Migration Literary Award, closes submissions in five days. No rankings. No prizes. Just your story, honoured alongside hers.

Countless journeys, one humanity. 🍁

Her mother spoke about the war the way someone else might describe the weather—casually, without ceremony, folding the dead into ordinary conversation. Morsal Yakuby grew up in Toronto absorbing these stories: born in Afghanistan, raised between Farsi and English, between her family’s world and ...

08/24/2026

Seven days remain to submit your story to The Tapestry. Professional and previously unpublished writers are equally welcome. Polish was never the point here. Truth was. If a draft has been waiting for the right moment, this is it. Submit your story today:
https://galleryofhumanmigration.org/stories-of-migration/the-tapestry-share-your-story/

08/21/2026

Ten days. That's how much longer the window stays open for The Tapestry, the Gallery's 2026 collection of migration stories. Every voice that arrives gets honoured the same way. Published. Held in the collection for good. Three doors in: Staying. Crossing. Receiving. Pick the one that's yours. 3,000 to 4,500 words, in English, one story per writer. Door closes August 31, 11:59pm ET.

Submit your story here: https://galleryofhumanmigration.org/stories-of-migration/the-tapestry-share-your-story/

08/20/2026

Somewhere, a woman is deciding whether to write down what her mother never said. Somewhere, a man is putting into words the border his father crossed so he wouldn't have to. These are the kinds of stories The Tapestry is built to hold. Not the polished ones. The true ones. No single winner. No ranking. Just a place where migration stories, personal or inherited, get to exist on the record.

Submissions close August 31. Submit your story here: https://galleryofhumanmigration.org/stories-of-migration/the-tapestry-share-your-story/

08/12/2026

Three bottles by the bedside — milk, juice, and water — placed every night by a father who had no other language for tenderness at midnight.

That image sits at the heart of "Her Story," submitted to the Gallery's inaugural Migration Literary Award by the Prairie Collective, a Vancouver-based duo whose collaboration weaves together two crossings: one lived, one inherited.

"Not every story needs to be immediate or complete. It needs intention, and to be held long enough until it finds the right form."

Read the full Threshold conversation at the link below:
https://galleryofhumanmigration.org/we-are-the-architects-we-are-the-architecture/

Submit YOUR migration story through The Tapestry, the 2026 edition of the Gallery's Migration Literary Award. Submissions open March 31. Deadline August 31, 2026.
https://galleryofhumanmigration.org/stories-of-migration/the-tapestry-share-your-story/

Three bottles by the bedside — milk, juice, water — placed every night by a father who had no other language for care. It is one of the images at the heart of Her Story, a dialogue between a first-generation immigrant and their second-generation Canadian partner, honoured in the Gallery's inaugu...

08/04/2026

At eleven, Rocco Maragna left Italy with his mother and landed at Pier 21 in Halifax, the threshold that welcomed a million newcomers before him. He learned English fast enough to become, in his words, "a voice for his family and other Italian immigrants."

Six decades followed. Architecture degrees from Toronto, Venice, Harvard. Buildings on four continents—a plaza on Yonge Street, the Canadian Embassy in Cairo, towns rebuilt after the 1976 Friuli earthquake. Then in 1997, he returned to Pier 21 and felt what he calls "the full arc of my migration: beckoning, beginning, becoming and belonging."

That return became the Gallery of Human Migration. Rocco is our founder. Today he's named one of the Top 25 Canadian Immigrants of 2026.

"Architecture taught me how to shape places," he says. "Migration taught me how people come to belong within them."

Congratulations, Rocco.
Thank you for your support!

08/04/2026

At eleven, Rocco Maragna left Italy with his mother and landed at Pier 21 in Halifax, the threshold that welcomed a million newcomers before him. He learned English fast enough to become, in his words, "a voice for his family and other Italian immigrants."
Six decades followed. Architecture degrees from Toronto, Venice, Harvard. Buildings on four continents — a plaza on Yonge Street, the Canadian Embassy in Cairo, towns rebuilt after the 1976 Friuli earthquake. Then in 1997, he returned to Pier 21 and felt what he calls "the full arc of my migration: beckoning, beginning, becoming and belonging."
That return became the Gallery of Human Migration. Rocco is our founder. Today he's named one of the Top 25 Canadian Immigrants of 2026.
"Architecture taught me how to shape places," he says. "Migration taught me how people come to belong within them."
Congratulations, Rocco.

https://canadianimmigrant.ca/canadas-top-25-immigrants/2026-top-25-canadian-immigrant-awards/maragna-rocco

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07/28/2026

MohamedHammoud was eight, walking home from school in grade three, when he started narrating his own life. Rain ran toward the curb, and somewhere in that runoff a reel was already turning. A boy watching himself as the main character of a story he hadn't yet found words for. Decades later, those words found their way into the Gallery's inaugural Migration Literary Award. The story was called "Reclaiming My Name." Our jury awarded it the grand prize.

Read the full written interview with Mohamed Hammoud:
https://galleryofhumanmigration.org/the-door-he-chose-to-open

Submit YOUR migration story through The Tapestry, the 2026 edition of the Gallery's Migration Literary Award. Submissions open March 31. Deadline August 31, 2026.
https://galleryofhumanmigration.org/stories-of-migration/the-tapestry-share-your-story/

He was eight years old when he started narrating his own life from a Toronto curb, watching puddles run toward the storm drain. Decades on, Mohamed Hammoud's award-winning story "Reclaiming My Name" became the seed of a memoir arriving this October. In this Threshold conversation, he talks about the...

07/14/2026

She didn't tell anyone she was doing it. Not her parents. Not her friends. She kept the submission to herself until it became real enough to share.

At 18, Ana-Maria Posada-Borda submitted her story — built from 22-minute car rides between her parents' homes in Montreal, and the Colombian voices that filled them — to the Gallery's inaugural Migration Literary Award. It received an Honourable Mention. And then people started reading it.

"You never know how much your perspective can mean to someone else."

Read the full Threshold conversation with Ana-Maria:

https://galleryofhumanmigration.org/the-car-that-carried-the-story/

Every migration story deserves a home. Yours starts here: submit to The Tapestry by August 31...

https://galleryofhumanmigration.org/stories-of-migration/the-tapestry-share-your-story/

Ana-Maria Posada-Borda has been thinking about car rides for as long as she can remember—not the destinations, but what her parents said in those moments, facing forward, the cost of each word only clear to her later. Born in Montréal to Colombian parents who arrived before she did, she is eighte...

06/30/2026

A fiddle melody. A grandmother's quiet stubbornness. A story that crossed an ocean to find its way home.

In our latest Threshold conversation, Elisa Bryce talks about "War Brides" — her Honourable Mention entry in the Gallery's inaugural Migration Literary Award — and what it meant to carry four generations of women's voices into a single submission.

"This story was the combined voices of my great-grandparents, grandparents, and mother as well as my own."

Read the full conversation:
https://galleryofhumanmigration.org/the-music-she-carried/

The Tapestry is open for submissions, but not for long. Share your story before the August 31 deadline!
https://galleryofhumanmigration.org/stories-of-migration/the-tapestry-share-your-story/