About the Saartjie Journal

Founded in March 2025 as a two-person passion project, The Saartjie Journal is a review blog and not-for-profit literary journal which aims to elevate the voices of black women writers and artists. We celebrate prose, poetry and visual art which centres all dimensions of black womanhood, from the personal to the political, championing both art as activism and art for art’s sake. We welcome creators of all backgrounds, ages, gender identities and sexual orientations, with a special emphasis on writers and artists of geophraphic minorities historically underrepresented in mainstream media. We aim to publish both emerging and established voices, upholding evocative work which challenges the boundaries of language and form.

So often black women in media have been dehumanised, forced into narrow moulds, or erased entirely. Our guiding philosophy is that art—in the broadest sense—is not merely a leisure activity, but a vehicle for empathy. The Saartjie Journal is a platform made for, by and about black women which explores the true breadth and complexity of our experiences—whether joyful, tragic, or mundane.