creative writing & poetry
A flash fiction story originally written for and published by The Story Seed.
It was as if Margaret was still here.
After all those years, her presence could still be felt everywhere – in the house and in the garden, in the river and in the air. But most strongly, in his paintings.
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This flash fiction story was originally written for and published by The Story Seed. It is inspired by and dedicated to the teachings and meditations of Thich Nhat Hanh, a beloved Zen master, spiritual leader, activist and poet.
She closed her eyes and inhaled the sunset mist…
As she let her breath out slowly, a deep sense of nostalgia filled her.
It felt like she was in a long-lost 19th-century Romantic painting.
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My first piece of flash fiction, originally written for and published by The Story Seed. It is inspired by and dedicated to one of my favorite novels of all time, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
I’ve been wearing his sweatshirt ever since they took him away. He once told me that its color was named after a bird.
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In the age of empowerment, models are on a mission to break the stereotypes and challenge the criteria by which their success is measured.
Oxford Dictionary’s definition of a model is “A person employed to display clothes by wearing them.” Which is, in the literal sense, true, of course – but clearly inadequate especially when one thinks about the successful, outspoken and inspiring models of our time, like Adwoa Aboah, Winnie Harlow, Ashley Graham, Hari Nef and Halima Aden. If there was a chance to edit that definition now and expand it, what could’ve been said?
A model is a person (i.e. a human, not a hanger) who has a unique character, soul, opinions and beliefs. A person who works hard to show that, that there’s much more to them. A person who works hard in the professional sense too, in not always so glamorous conditions which they have little control over, while more often than not facing gender and racial discrimination, verbal abuse and bullying, sexual assault and constant criticism about how to look, what to eat, who to become. A person who has scars and marks, insecurities and health issues like everyone else, but perhaps feels that people don’t want to hear about all that, they just want to see the body – the person who is employed to display clothes by wearing them.
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CONTINUE READINGHow social media platforms are being used by young people for experiencing art is a current issue that most people can have an idea about or be familiar with, as it is being focused on and explored constantly. In this short story, I wanted to take a slightly different approach and reflect on the role of social media on experiencing art not from the point of view of a young individual or a millennial; but from the perspective and experience of a pre-social media generation. I hope you’ll enjoy.
The Abstract Expressionism exhibition at Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is probably on the list of every art critic or art enthusiast as a ‘must see’ exhibition since it opened on the 24th of September. I guess it is the collective energy this exhibition holds one of the main reasons for its popularity – it is the first major Abstract Expressionism exhibit in the UK since 1959 that gathers more than 150 works, by both the most famous and lesser-known artists of the movement in one space.
As a final-year university student perplexed by the amount of assignments I have, unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to visit this exhibition in the first few weeks of its opening. But since I really wanted to see it, last Saturday I forced myself to put that stress and cup of coffee aside and yay, I was finally there!
The huge, geometric sculptures of David Smith greeted me when I entered to the RA courtyard, which was already impressive enough even without any work of art. What affected me most about these sculptures were the strong connotations they made to me, of critical yet usually unpleasant concepts such as oppression, insurgence and death– perhaps due to their highly mechanical structure, their large scale or another element that I couldn’t point out for sure – but the profound and even overwhelming effect started to reveal itself at that point, as if hinting what was awaiting me inside.
Curious and excited, I started discovering what the galleries inside had to offer. Some featured the works of different artists who had a similar approach or common traits in their works together, such as the ‘Darkness Visible’ gallery in which the works by painters like Robert Motherwell and Philip Guston, which all had unique styles and themes they explored yet carried a gloomier, heavier air that unified them, were displayed together.
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Recently I’ve had the chance to meet Valerie Goode, the name behind the successful ethical & sustainable fashion label Kitty Ferreira, based in London.
The brand has launched at London Fashion Week two years ago, and it has won multiple awards from Royal College of Arts in 2013 for design innovation, and also the “Extending the Lifecycle of Clothing Design Award” from WRAP.org, which is an important government organisation.
The philosophy of the brand is to bridge the gap between the city and natural world, by using herbal dyes and natural sources such as pomegranate and onion skins in their collections. Their aim is to make sustainability and ethics more common and widely-accepted in the fashion world.
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