Fiction
To lean to the light
Sometimes when the curtains are drawn and the Sun sets to sleep, I remember my
Issue 1
Independent literary journal · Issue 3
Writing that refuses to remain silent
A literary journal for voices, ideas, and stories that refuse to remain silent.
Published by Bangladesh Creative Writing OlympiadRead without permission
01 / The journal
Featured
Criticism
The Commercialisation of Education in Bangladesh
The Commercialisation of Education
Issue 2
Philosophy
The Record and the Choice
The coin in your pocket, a planet in orbit, or the wheel of your childhood bicycle,if you take the distance across that shape (its diameter) and around it (its circumference), then divide that circumference by the diameter, you will undoubtedly land on π.
Issue 3
Letters
Ode to verse
Dearest verse,
Issue 3
Fiction
Moving
As I am about to put away the remainder of my boxes, a sudden strange feeling overrides me. The last golden rays of the setting sun gleam through the windows as I drop to the bed. Not my bed. At least, not yet. It will become my bed soon enough though. It always does. I’ll just have to give it a day, or two at best.
Issue 3
Poetry
stillness within a moving world
this loneliness will consume me
Issue 1
Poetry
a letter to the algorithm
You promote books with a rapist for a male lead–
Issue 2
Society
Is It Time to Give Up on the Civic Sense of Bangladeshis?
From lacking basic common sense in public places to showing hostility towards
Issue 2
A standing recommendation
Always Read
Fiction
A Memory of a River or a River of Memory?
I see a woman by the river. She is covered in some tar-like black sludge. Scars and
Issue 2
Philosophy
The Monster Was Always the Monster: What Frankenstein Gets Right About Ugliness and Evil
We’ve been told our whole lives that beauty is only skin deep. What matters is who you are on the inside. That judging someone by their appearance is shallow, primitive, and morally wrong.
Issue 1
02 / From the archive
Issue 3
The current issue, with every published piece arranged newest first.
Fiction
The Monster
In a world of monsters we live in, I sigh as I say to myself. But we can’t stop living in fear, can we?
Issue 3
Poetry
Night at the Junkyard
My mind wanders back to a serene winter night. In a land that is no more, yet exists in a thousand minds.
Issue 3
Personal Essays
Ordinary is the New Failure
The idea isn’t that ambition is bad, it is that we are treating ordinary life like failed life.
Issue 3
Fiction
Moving
As I am about to put away the remainder of my boxes, a sudden strange feeling overrides me. The last golden rays of the setting sun gleam through the windows as I drop to the bed. Not my bed. At least, not yet. It will become my bed soon enough though. It always does. I’ll just have to give it a day, or two at best.
Issue 3
Sci-Fi
The Man Who Reached The Void
There are questions that haunt humanity, and there are questions that consume those who are foolish enough to pursue them. For Marcus, there was only one. “After everything ends, where do we go?”
Issue 3
Fiction
অ-মানুষ
'এইখানে রাতে আসতে কোনো মানুষ সাহস করে না, যারা ভুলেও এসে পরসে, তারা আমার পেটে. তুমি কে?
Issue 3
Poetry
Human
I am not allowed to bleed near her divinity.
Issue 3
Poetry
Yellow
The princess locked in the tower.
Issue 3
Philosophy
The Record and the Choice
The coin in your pocket, a planet in orbit, or the wheel of your childhood bicycle,if you take the distance across that shape (its diameter) and around it (its circumference), then divide that circumference by the diameter, you will undoubtedly land on π.
Issue 3
Fiction
The Pale Lunar Horizon
Mikhail adjusts the volume of his headset till it drowns out the tinnitus. Music really helps keep inspections like these vaguely within the bounds of being tolerable. Without the music, Mikhail is certain he would have lost his mind within the first week. He does so with one hand, careful to keep the other firmly on the steering wheel; the rover does not have great traction, and he would rather not get stuck out here. The scenery is desolate, oppressive even. It’s almost an assault on his senses, yet he presses on through the endless stretches of the featureless grey dust.
Issue 3
Fiction
The Others
I. The oil pastels
Issue 3
Poetry
Liar
1
Issue 3
Fiction
The Tale of The Mediterranean
People love that word. Illegal. Illegal immigrant. Illegal border. Illegal boat. They say it with clean mouths, in clean rooms, over clean water. Nobody says illegal hunger. Nobody says illegal poverty. Nobody says illegal childhood without food.
Issue 3
Fiction
Nishi
****
Issue 3
Fiction
Touch Me Not
It was back in 2013, when I was in class four that I first met Babul sir. He was my Islamic studies teacher. I remember the first time he saw me, and how he never looked away, not until he was already in his seat, and one of my classmates was asking him what he’d teach us today. Babul sir ignored him entirely. His very first words were, “We have a new beauty in our class!”
Issue 3
Fiction
Fish tank
The fish tank is tiny and cramped and the exterior of it is stained an ugly shade of brown that can only be accumulated through years of neglected water stains. In it, a tiny blue fish swims to and fro. Thrashing its little fins and tail in the murky water from one corner to another as if it has anywhere else to be other than in the tiny cave settled over the small pebbles or under the poor plastic imitation of seaweeds.
Issue 3
Personal Essays
What Remains When The Room Empties
The morning is spent putting on our faces, the afternoon drifts as we perform our parts, and the night falls over as we think which of the casts was actually us.
Issue 3
Fiction
The Revival
I wake up to the brazen sound of my alarm clock feeling like a soulless pit of lost potential again. I sit up and grab my phone to open my socials and end up doom-scrolling for an hour, smiling at others happiness while crying at others loss. I look at the time, its 11 a.m. Realizing how much time I’ve wasted, a surge of venomous guilt makes me hate myself for a second. Technology has given us far more than we can ever imagine, but like a quiet midnight thief, it has taken a lot from us as well. As I fight off the thought that the days of my life are being reduced to nothing as I live vicariously through others online, I get the idea of walking around my new neighbourhood. I get up and start getting ready to go outside.
Issue 3
Fiction
ফিরে এসো।
প্রিয় প্রতিমা,
Issue 3
Poetry
I would love to drown
How dare you call to me,
Issue 3
Letters
Ode to verse
Dearest verse,
Issue 3
Poetry
Ruins
The grand walls,
Issue 3
03 / Editorial index
The Ten
The Ten are the ten editorial fields through which TAMED reads and publishes writing.
01FictionLiterary realism, historical fiction, the gothic, the uncanny, the speculative.02PoetryLyric and narrative verse, free verse and received form, the elegy, the ode.03Personal EssaysMemory and confession, family and inheritance, the body and the self, illness and grief.04LettersEpistles and open letters, correspondence, the address to the dead, the unsent.05PhilosophyMetaphysics and ethics, mind and consciousness, language and truth, the examined life.06CriticismBooks, film and music, art and culture, close reading, the argued review.07SatireParody and irony, political comedy, the mock form, the absurd, the joke with an edge.08SocietyClass and labour, gender and family, religion and power, migration, the city and the village.09FleshBody horror, transformation, the folkloric body, the scientific body, the grotesque.10ScienceNatural history, ecology and the environment, medicine, technology and the machine.
Explore The Ten 04 / Editors' selection
TAMED Honors
Pieces recognized by the editors for exceptional craft, originality, and impact.
No works have been assigned an Editorial Rating of 5+ yet.
05 / A note on voice
We believe a writer does not need permission to think.
We believe words can be beautiful, uncomfortable, strange, painful, humorous, or impossible.
We believe writing should remain human.
TAMED exists for writing that refuses to remain silent.
Identity should never determine the value of a voice.
Writers may publish under their real name, a pen name, or anonymously.
An invitation
There is a place for your voice here.
Submit your work