---

What makes a free online magazine successful or (more precisely) celebrate the first anniversary with unmatched joy and excitement? May be participation of eager and conscious artists, hope of a space for free expression which is not influenced by the need to finding an financial actualisation and unfathomable love and support of friends. That’s how we, at DoubleSpeak, can sum up our journey through this first year in online publication. Majority of the works came from India, as the founders are from India. Yet it must be said that in times when phrases like ‘life in a global village’ are becoming true in our lives, the social media platforms helped us to host pieces from many countries from almost all continents. 

This issue is special for many reasons, anniversary being just one of them. This issue has pieces from the same author who simultaneously contributed (self-confessed) both a right-wing fiction and a poem celebrating a left-wing political leader. This issue has evidences that we are learning to publish haiga in the proper format. This issue has ballads from Egypt, artistic expression of hostel walls through a photostory, magnificence of the Northern Lights and even expressionist works of fine artists. We are publishing historical essays, views of current affairs like the Hijab-row or invasion of  Ukraine as well. It must be said that many pieces would require feedback from the readers which would help the artists improve their craft. So I would like to invite all of you to read the pieces, share with your friends and family and most importantly give us feedback to bring you more enjoyable, striking and truthful pieces of creating.

Read the works and write to us. If you wish to critique the published work, we welcome your words and we will publish them as letters in the coming issue.

List of Contributors

---

Poetry	Athulya Thomas Sithara Appukuttan Walid Abdallah (2) Ivan Jenson (2) Preethy Argha De Todd Mercer Zornista Ge John Grey Svetlin Trendafilov Glen Armstrong Sneha Chatterjee Aniket Banerjee Debbie Ghosh Maid Čorbić Nila Vanda Celin Anannya Dasgupta Giti Chandra Ndaba Sibanda Sunayani Ganguly Jibendu Narayan Mazumder
Fiction	David Mellor Dinesh Mohan Ndaba Sibanda Arka Chattopadhyay Pathik Mitra Duhita Banerjee Jibendu Narayan Mazumder
Essay	Shreya Kulkarni (2) Paromita Goswami Svetlin Trendafilov Sanil M. Neelakandan Cherilynn Fiver Indranil Banerjee Yaaminey Mubayi
Photography	Soumen Mandal Jeremy Piloquet Arnab Chaudhuri Sandip De
Photo-Stories	Ivan Jenson Shubhangi Tyagi Muhammed Munavver Adriana Rocha Sreedeep
Translation	Rudrani Gangopadhyay Supurna Dasgupta Priyanka Trehan
Collaboration	Jibendu Narayan Mazumder and Kaushik Saha Pritha Chattopadhyay, Souva Chattopadhyay and Arupratan Ghosh
Letters	Arpan Krishna Deb

DoubleSpeak is a literary magazine which is edited for quality and integrity, and it is absolutely free. Guided strongly by the values of free-expression, academic honesty and equality of all individuals, the magazine aims to maintain a platform where voices from various sources will have a larger audience. We hope that the unadulterated joy of finding new things within and around us, will remain the main focus of our team.

The editorial team is a group of enthusiastic volunteers who are successful professionals in their own fields. Learn more about the team members and the idea of DoubleSpeak. Also go through our policies, which undoubtedly are the simplest among the ones you would find anywhere