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Roving Eye, Spotlight

Spotlight Site: Kitchen Butterfly

By Robert Cottrell

“They say a picture is worth a thousand words… These few words are worth a thousand pictures on social media.”
Robert Cottrell on Kitchen Butterfly, Ozoz Sokoh’s Nigerian food blog.

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Roving Eye, Spotlight

Spotlight Site: The Marshall Project

By Robert Cottrell

“If you want to see journalism at its best, then this is the place to go. Of Bill Keller’s two editorships, the second may yet be the greater.”
Continuing his weekly series on the best of the web, Robert Cottrell admires The Marshall Project.

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Roving Eye, Spotlight

Spotlight Site: Altucher Confidential

By Robert Cottrell

“James Altucher is the Mozart of oversharing…” Robert Cottrell’s Spotlight Series visits Altucher Confidential, with a short detour via Medium.

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Roving Eye, Spotlight

Spotlight Site: Ask the Pilot

By Robert Cottrell

“Answers to all those questions you have always wanted to know about the inner workings of airlines, but no longer dare ask for fear of ending up on a no-fly list.”
Robert Cottrell’s Spotlight Site series continues with ‘Ask the Pilot’, a blog run by Patrick Smith.

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Roving Eye, Spotlight

Spotlight Site: Nico Muhly

By Robert Cottrell

“He approaches the work of others with the expertise and shared delight of a practitioner. His post on ‘Beyoncé’ is surely one of the finest record reviews ever written.”
Robert Cottrell visits Nico Muhly’s blog.

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Roving Eye, Spotlight

Spotlight Site: Aeon

By Robert Cottrell

“This is the opposite of dumbing-down. This is smarting-up…”
Robert Cottrell on Aeon and the proliferation of wonderful writing in the field of popular science.

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Roving Eye, Spotlight

Spotlight Site: Edge

By Robert Cottrell

“Oscar Wilde said something to the effect that he never needed to go out in the evening when he could find such wit and wisdom in the books he had at home. I feel something similar when I read interviews on Edge.”
Robert Cottrell’s Spotlight Site series visits John Brockman’s Edge.

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Roving Eye, Spotlight

Spotlight Site: Practical Ethics

By Robert Cottrell

“The subject-matter often teeters at the very edge of what society will accept, and very occasionally jumps off into the abyss…”
Robert Cottrell on Practical Ethics, a blog connected to the Philosophy Faculty at Oxford.

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Roving Eye, Spotlight

Spotlight Site: Daf Yomi

By Robert Cottrell

“A model of how a blog can add value to a mainstream publication by doing something eccentric and focused, something with a life and a coherence of its own.”
Robert Cottrell on Adam Kirsch’s Daf Yomi blog.

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Roving Eye, Spotlight

Spotlight Site: Deserter

By Robert Cottrell

“It isn’t all beer. Not quite…”
Next stop on Robert Cottrell’s tour of the web: Deserter.

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In the Magazine

A Word from the Editor

Don’t cry like a girl. Be a (wo)man.

Why holding up the women in our lives can help build a nation, in place of tearing it down.

Literature

This House is an African House

"This house is an African house./ This your body is an African woman’s body..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

Shoots

"Sapling legs bend smoothly, power foot in place,/ her back, parallel to solid ground,/ makes her torso a table of support..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

A Dry Season Doctor in West Africa

"She presses her toes together. I will never marry, she says. Jamais dans cette vie! Where can I find a man like you?" By...

In the Issue

Property of a Sorceress

"She died under mango trees, under kola nut/ and avocado trees, her nose pressed to their roots,/ her hands buried in dead leaves, her...

Literature

What Took Us to War

"What took us to war has again begun,/ and what took us to war/ has opened its wide mouth/ again to confuse us." By...

Literature

Sometimes, I Close My Eyes

"sometimes, this is the way of the world,/ the simple, ordinary world, where things are/ sometimes too ordinary to matter. Sometimes,/ I close my...

Literature

Quarter to War

"The footfalls fading from the streets/ The trees departing from the avenues/ The sweat evaporating from the skin..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Literature

Transgendered

"Lagos is a chronicle of liquid geographies/ Swimming on every tongue..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Fiction

Sketches of my Mother

"The mother of my memories was elegant. She would not step out of the house without her trademark red lipstick and perfect hair. She...

Fiction

The Way of Meat

"Every day—any day—any one of us could be picked out for any reason, and we would be... We’d part like hair, pushing into the...

Fiction

Between Two Worlds

"Ursula spotted the three black students immediately. Everyone did. They could not be missed because they kept to themselves and apart from the rest...."...

Essays

Talking Gender

"In fact it is often through the uninformed use of such words that language becomes a tool in perpetuating sexism and violence against women...

Essays

Unmasking Female Circumcision

"Though the origins of the practice are unknown, many medical historians believe that FGM dates back to at least 2,000 years." Gimel Samera looks...

Essays

Not Just A Phase

"...in the workplace, a person can practically be forced out of their job by discrimination, taking numerous days off for fear of their physical...

Essays

The Birth of Bigotry

"The psychology of prejudice demands that we are each our own moral police". Maria Amir on the roots of bigotry and intolerance.

Fiction

The Score

"The person on the floor was unmistakeably dead. It looked like a woman; she couldn’t be sure yet..." By Hawa Jande Golakai.

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One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at [email protected].

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.