April Reflections: Au Courant Issues and More

If ever there was a time to utilise and celebrate your own writing style, that moment is now, and I believe this statement wholeheartedly. I’m a fan of writers and works which straddle or defy genre definitions. Writers who understand the ongoing conventions and conversations as well as those who step out of a genre bringing fresh, unique perspectives. Great writing is great writing, regardless of whether it features the President of the United States, Unicorns, or Aliens. It is truly a humbling experience to be able to read the pieces submitted by writers while editing them and discuss ideas with them and our dilemmas and hopes for bringing change. 

This April, we tried to stay as au courant as possible while also publishing general articles that will be of use for years to come. To promote the Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we published two articles; one looks into the trauma that comes with Rape Investigation written by Prodipta and the other where Masud analyses I May Destroy You. I encourage the readers to go through them because they are both well-informed pieces. Prodipta also worked on Poetry and its Flourishing Era within Gen Z in order to celebrate Poetry Month, and so did Maleeha with her breathtaking illustration – A Tribute to Dead Poets Society: “Oh captain, my captain”.

That was just a glimpse of the talent the artists on our team hold, and that can also be found in the beautiful artwork that Tahsina worked on for Laylat-ul-Qadr and Anika’s pixel artwork for Noboborsho is praiseworthy. The photographers capture images of the exact feelings, no matter how fleeting they may be, that are both familiar yet unknown to us, such as the albums Ramadan by Yourself by Rohit and Ramadan Food Fest that Asgar, Jarif, and Shihab all worked on splendidly together. 

Coming back to the writers, despite the hectic month we had, I am proud of Asgar for giving so much of his time to not only handling the logistics of the team but also working on news articles for Tech with Efti and Gaming with Labib, two sectors I am still very ignorant about but willing to learn, and the articles that our team members put out are friendly for dummies like me. Speaking of dummies, we finally introduced the Business section on our website, and Mabia wrote an excellent article explaining NFT for Dummies.

Muaaz bhaiya’s articles on The First Images from James Webb Space Telescope and Word Processors are incredibly well-articulated and have his unique humorous touch. Nubah wrote a piece on how Bangladesh will soon see Subway Networks in the capital and reviewed a music video by an up-and-rising Bangladeshi band, Vanessa. Masud and Subyeta’s friendly debate article on whether K-dramas suck or not was both hilarious and adorable, and that’s coming from an avid fan of K-dramas like yours truly.

I could go on and on about the incredible work that has been published this month alone, but unfortunately, I have a word limit for this editorial. I will urge you to check the articles in the Sports section if that’s your thing because Naqib is a Sports enthusiast who edits articles like a pro, or the Fashion articles that feature both Baishakhi and Eid as well as other events and issues that Subyeta overlooks and writes about diligently.

We’ve also gotten many amazing contributions from outside of the team, and the contributors have all shown so much enthusiasm that only motivated us further. All the fiction pieces we received from both inside and outside of the team are crazy good. 

I would like to give a special shout-out to Odri apu, who continuously helps me manage the team as well as help other members with their work and motivate all of us. I also must mention Faiyaz for putting up with all my requests and blunders that sometimes cause our website to crash and, consequently, me to panic. I am ever so grateful for every single one of the members as I am to myself for getting through the anxiety.

I hate to brag, but as it happens, I have met some of the most wonderful people while working for this magazine that Asgar and I founded, people who write literary pieces and illustrate artworks and photograph moments that are not only tremendously brilliant but brilliantly unique as well, to say the least. We have a long way to go as an individual magazine, but I am willing to take this moment to feel proud of the little achievements we earned till now.

Since the launch of The Interlude back in January this year, we maintained around 10k+ monthly reach on Facebook and have managed to get an average of 2500+ monthly views on the website. This is a great feat considering most of the members are trying to balance the workload along with our very intense academic pressure, and for whom this is the first-time experience of working alongside our small effort towards a big dream.

We are constantly coming up with new ideas that will require dedication and patience from all of us to execute smoothly, but I have faith. We are planning to expand our community in various ways to reach more contributors who are also searching for a platform to promote their work. We have plans brewing for a physical edition that readers can purchase, and the contributors can finally see their work in print.

We will also try to include more forms of media that we can push out to the world and, most importantly, try to monetise our content so that this becomes a viable, sustainable hobby for us. Dear well-wisher, thank you for staying with us on our journey. We hope you will stick with us for the coming months as we keep bringing quality content to every issue.

Reader, I believe everyone has a writer in them, so do not hesitate to send your work to theinterludenet@gmail.com and follow us on our social media platforms-

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