Magpies Mix Tape: Working on Something Good
This playlist celebrates the joys, sorrows, doubts, and soul-nurturing importance of the labor of creation.
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Gendered Contempt and the History of Language
“In the end, gendered insult reveals that language is one of the most durable carriers of inequality. It stores contempt in ordinary forms. It turns hierarchy into shorthand. It allows long histories of valuation to survive in single syllables and familiar phrases.”
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September 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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When I Go Back Home
“I came back because there are places that do not merely exist on maps; they exist inside the blood. I came back because no matter how far a person travels, there is a particular dust that remembers his feet. I came back because the village that raised us deserves more than nostalgia. It deserves attention.…
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The Mā-hua-tsìng & The Strait
Set between the muddy paddy fields of Taiwan and a cold college room in California, this story weaves together Taiwanese bird ecology , traditional Taiwanese street delicacies and a linguistic misunderstanding. It explores how food, nature, and intergenerational love can cross geographical and historical oceans when words fail.
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The Heptagon Project
Heptagon is an audio project exploring social, cultural, and artistic avenues within the limitless genre of electronic music.
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The West 79th St. Laundromat
“Sometimes I wonder, perhaps naively, if all the problems of the country could be solved by sitting the folks in Washington down at a table with a lump of clay and some encouragement. They can bring their dirty laundry if it helps them find the time.”
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Judith Scott: Uncovering innate talent
“Her work is an abstract reflection of her life. The colourful, idyllic childhood, the loneliness and isolation of institutional care and, above all, the connection with her sister Joyce.”
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“The Child in Me”: How Tomi Ungerer’s Childhood Informed His Books
“He grew up in Strasbourg, Alsace, and when he was eight years old the city was taken over by the Nazis. Tomi and his family spent the war under occupation, and although they were spared the worst effects of war, the saturation of Nazi propaganda and the reports of what was happening further afield left…
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Criticism in World Literature and Cinema: A Unified Perspective
At its core, criticism asks a fundamental question: how do artistic works produce meaning?
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August 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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Do you like to dance for free? Letter From the Editor, August, 2026
Midsummer ramblings.
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The musical conquests of Goopy and Bagha
“Warmth and empathy are qualities found in all of Ray’s movies, but this genre allows him to display them in their rawest, least guarded form.”
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Angry Animals at the Muzeum Czartoryskich
A trip to the Muzeum Czartoryskich with Lauren Barnett.
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Mistress of a New World
The Blazing World — via a dizzy mix of animal-human hybrids, Immaterial Spirits, and burning foes — tells of a woman’s absolute rule as Empress over a parallel planet. Emily Lord Fransee reflects on what the book and its author Margaret Cavendish can teach us about empire, gender, and imagination in the 17th century.
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Fifty Years After Soweto: A Struggle Without Documentation Is Not a Struggle
“South Africa’s anti-apartheid photographers did not merely record brutality. They preserved evidence, built collective memory, and transformed the camera into a weapon of political education and international solidarity.”
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The Lexicon of Facism
“Langston Hughes’ words sent chills down my spine. It gave me the wherewithal to truly understand that fascism is not at all a foreign term, nor is it strictly related to Europe or even novel in twenty-first century American life.”
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Night of the Long Knives: One Night in Istanbul
‘It’s going to be a long night,’ I said. And it was.
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Memory Beyond the Mind
“Taken together, these examples challenge the idea that the past disappears once it is no longer actively remembered. The past often remains present in quieter and less obvious ways. It stays in what is unsaid, in the places people move through, and in the physical traces of those who came before them.”
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July 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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Independence Day Tears: The Memphis Blues of Furry Lewis
“On July 5, 1968—just three months after King’s assassination and the April 16th settlement that ended the strike—blues musician Furry Lewis was quietly shedding tears while entertaining friends at a party in his Memphis home. … The previous day had marked the nation’s first Independence Day since King’s death, yet for many black Americans in…
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Fiction: Blood Orange
I wonder where these guys are from. I wonder if they’re far from home. I wonder if they have kids or wives or parents or dogs who miss them. Or, maybe, who are glad they’re gone. Which would be worse?
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Maya Deren: The Magical Woman as Filmmaker
“In At Land, and in Meshes also, domestic interiors signify the world of human society in which the protagonist is contained and trapped, but here there is also an exterior world of landscape and seashore, in which she becomes empowered and where she acts with confidence and certainty.”
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The Art of Dancing in the Storm: A Philosophical-Practical Approach to the Enigma of Suffering and Existence
“You cannot command the oceans, nor can you dictate the trajectory of the winds. But the mastery of the helm—the art of adjusting the sails—is, and forever remains, your sovereign right.”
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Recognizing Beauty: An Interview With Patrick Joust
“Much of what has the most meaning relates to small stories and moments. This isn’t all there is to it, but recognizing beauty is really a big part of that too, especially if it can be highlighted in places that are unexpected or overlooked.”
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Movement and Memory: Oluwapelumi Fagbemi’s Photographs of Ballet
“Whether this movement is the careful pattern and madness of dance, the search for meaning, or the apotheosis of the human as spirit, the essence is always the act of becoming.”
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On Finding My Grandmother’s Portrait
For generations a formal portrait wasn’t a mere document but an assertion of self-hood: I’m here. Remember me.
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Thoughts on Photography: Walker Evans’ Polaroids
“People ask me what camera I used. It’s not the camera. Its—.” He tapped his temple with his index finger: it’s the eye and the brain.
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June 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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Potholes and Potshots: Yvonne Rainer
“From descriptions of individual feminine experience floating free of both social context and narrative hierarchy, to descriptions of individual feminine experience placed in radical juxtaposition against historical events, to explicitly feminist speculations about feminine experience”.
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Flash Fiction: 15 Seconds of Fame & Hopscotch at the Hospital
2 short short stories from Alfred D Searls
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