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Zeinabu irene Davis

“Surrounded by people who were almost entirely unrepresented in film, Davis found her calling. She returned to the US galvanised — she would dedicate her career to telling their stories.”

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More Than Half a Poet: The Grasmere Journals

It’s a strange but probably not-so-strange thing that a beautifully-written account of the baking of bread, of illness and worry, of the beauty of the light on flying crows, the wind on the water, the glow through the mountains, would have such an enduring power to move us.

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An Abject Human Failure

The myriad examples of artwork created by children in internment camp settings are evidence that the human spirit is strong and malleable, even under the most extreme conditions.

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Raymond Darlington’s Expressionist Realism

“Although he personally describes his art as Afro-realism, when we look at it with historical circumspection, we will be more attuned to link it to the larger zeitgeist of a slew of known and unknown artists operating presently in the Internet and social media spaces, so that it almost feels like a movement.”

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April Issue, 2026

A collection of all the articles we’ve published over the past month, for those who like to savor their Magpies’ tidings as an issue.

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The Legendary Iranian Poet Who Gives Me Hope

“Read Forugh’s poems and you’ll find the very forces that shape our moment: misogyny, censorship, nativism, consumerism, the annihilating violence of war. Read her poems and you’ll find that they, like all the best poems, don’t merely offer a reprieve from the abuses and terrors of the world, but a repudiation of the forces that…

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Syria, I Went Back

“And now, one year later, I would walk into an arrivals hall at Damascus airport filled with Syrian families crying and hugging separated sons, now-married daughters, and children that have never seen their homeland. So many tears.”

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Fiction: The Valley

“For the most part the armies marched through the valley, so that they might do battle elsewhere, but some, like the soldiers of the crocked cross and the soldiers of the blood red banner, had stayed and fought and died, and in so doing they watered the rich, rocky soil with their blood, and their…

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March Issue, 2026

A collection of all the articles we’ve published over the past month, for those who like to savor their Magpies’ tidings as an issue.

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A Monumental Moment For the Masses

“A monument by nature pays homage to a person, place or event; however, as a public work of art, it should be reflective of democratic (not the political party, the ideology) principles like equality, equity and justice. White supremacist iconography, which are what the Confederate statues and sculptures are, is the antithesis of the three…

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Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

“In a prose style that is accessible and credible, it dissects with scalpel-like precision all the hypocrisy of the totalitarian mindset and sounds a clear and timeless warning to us all about the dangers of placing ideology before humanity.”

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Fiction: The Brothers

“The boys were never apart, from the earliest they were inseparable. They slept in the same bed, ate from the same plate, fought the same fights.”

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February Issue, 2026

A collection of all the articles we’ve published over the past month, for those who like to savor their Magpies’ tidings as an issue.

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The children are always ours

“The empire never intended that this testimony should be heard, but, if I hold my peace, the very stones will cry out… neither the citizen-subject within the gates nor the indescribable hordes outside it believe in the morality or the reality of the kingdom anymore — when no one, any longer, anywhere, aspires to the…

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John Heartfield, photomontage as a political weapon

“He inscribed the slogan ‘use photography as a weapon,’ which underlines his faith in the impact of this new medium and its ability to denounce the perversities of the modern world: fascism, war and its atrocities, Nazism or capitalism.”

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The Smoking Fish (El pez que fuma, 1977)

“Frequently claimed by critics as the best Venezuelan film ever made, El pez que fuma, (1977) was produced in the midst of the Oil Boom era and has since become a potent metaphor for the decadence at the height of Venezuela’s economic splendor.”

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January Issue, 2026

A collection of all the articles we’ve published over the past month, for those who like to savor their Magpies’ tidings as an issue.

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