https://www.refractmagazine.com/

Refract Magazine, 55 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY (2025)

04/30/2025

Calling all writers! REFRACT is currently accepting submissions for the annual Berlfein Prize. This is a chance to win $500 and be edited and published on our website!

Time is ticking! The deadline for submissions is TODAY midnight, April 30th. Please send all submissions (as well as any questions) to [email protected]

To read more about the prize and it’s sponsor, head to our website at: refractmagazine.co/the-berlfein-prize

04/29/2025

The MTA has ramped up efforts to prevent fare evasion: deploying gate guards, installing spikes to turnstiles, and even piloting new types of turnstiles. However, let’s say the emergency door is open and no guards are around. Would you walk through?

Alicia Grechu critically investigates this question through the lens of Kantian philosophy in their Berlfein Prize–winning piece, “The Subway Dilemma.” Grechu observes the ethics of this scenario, weighing the moral against the immoral and posing hypothetical alternative situations. For the millions who take the subway everyday, is there anything wrong with taking advantage of an opportunity to save $2.90?

To read more, head to our website at refractmagazine.c.om and explore REFRACT’s extensive archive of new, nonfiction writing. Illustration credit:

04/05/2025

With candor and humor, “Rainbows and Religion: My Struggle as a Q***r Muslim” shows how to be yourself even when you’re being asked not to.

In their Berlfein Prize–winning piece, Kadeeja Mohammed retells their experience of growing up q***r in a conservative Muslim household. In keen detail, Mohammed describes the time their palms grew sweaty after their mother questioned them on their rainbow Apple watch strap; when their sisters spoke to their mother on their behalf when she would stop talking to them; and when they realized that they are loved and accepted by those “who truly matter.”

To read more, head to our website at refractmagazine.c.om and explore REFRACT’s extensive archive of new, nonfiction writing.

Illustration credit:

03/31/2025

Although Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Confessions” and Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” were written many years apart under different contexts, David Redling argues they do something similar.

In his piece, “Rousseau and Woolf’s Literary Rebellion,” he observes the exigence of their works—how for Woolf, “With fiction, she doesn’t need to bend the truth”; and for Rousseau, how countering the ideas of the Enlightenment and becoming more connected to the natural world is “integral to preserving morals.”

To read more, head to our website at refractmagazine.c.om and explore REFRACT’s extensive archive of new, nonfiction writing. Illustration credit:

02/21/2025

“She peels some roasted peanuts. ‘Now that you’re old enough’—ten fingers—‘I’ll tell you a story.’” “Mah-mah keeps many secrets, but you’ve learned to supply them with your imagination.”

Cherry Leung shares the story of their mother and grandmother in “We Laugh at Our Clumsy Hands.” Moments of independence, endurance, and resistance are told throughout the narrative—the sacrifices of their mother, escaping hardship, men, and an arranged marriage; moving to Hong Kong when she was barely thirteen, the same age when the narrator was told this story.

To read more, head to our website at refractmagazine.com and explore REFRACT’s extensive archive of new, nonfiction writing.

Illustration credit:

02/17/2025

Is it worth losing one’s self and authenticity to pander to a culture that enforces Standard English?

As Loida Stelli Tavera writes in her Berlfein Prize–winning piece, “My Linguistic Autobiography,” eloquence and articulation indicate intellect. Contrarily, accents and dialects signal deficiency; slip-ups in code-switching awkwardly exposing one’s linguistic situation. Therefore, is intelligence limited through the channel of perfect English or is there a possibility where one can be smart authentically?

To read more, head to our website at refractmagazine.com and explore REFRACT’s extensive archive of new, nonfiction writing.

Illustration credit:

02/07/2025

Happy Spring Semester Bearcats! 🌿🐣🌻🦋🤍

We are excited to announce that next Thursday, February 13, from 1:00 to 2:00 PM, we will be hosting our first GIM meeting of the Fall 2024 semester in in our meeting space (NVC 7-205).

This is an amazing opportunity to learn about REFRACT, meet the masthead, and discover how YOU can get involved in the editing and publishing process!

We hope to see you there!

12/11/2024

To conclude the month of December, the year 2024, and this tired semester, REFRACT decided to edit and publish not just one essay, but an essay collection—a grand finale, so to speak.

The twelve essays explore a prompt given by Daniel Libertz (Baruch Department of English), which asks them to explore what it ultimately means to be human in an age where technologies appear to remove the humanity from the human experience. Despite this gloomy reality, our voice and the tradition of the written word endure. As Libertz puts it:

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is something we hear a lot about today. In the world of writing, it brings up questions of authenticity, which have been on my mind often. I don’t think there is an easy answer as to whether programs based on Large Language Models (LLMs) (e.g., ChatGPT) help produce writing that is “authentic.” But doing something like writing is special and I remain concerned how certain technologies, like LLMs, can shortchange the full experience of what writing can do for us as writers and as humans. Writing can be meaningful in ways that are unique to its own experience, where we can’t avoid confronting what language might mean when we mark it down on the page and see its reflections afterward.”

To read more, head to our website at refractmagazine.c.om and explore REFRACT’s extensive archive of new, nonfiction writing.

11/22/2024

The evolution of language is inevitable. In what appears to be the latest iteration, younger generations, particularly Gen Zers, find themselves using the slang and vernacular of AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) and drag ballroom culture.

However, as expected, the generations preceding Gen Z have their critiques—from satirizing the laziness of Gen Z youth-speak to denouncing Gen Z’s deviation from “standard” English. Laura Fasulo questions whether or not these criticisms reinforce linguistic racism and the colonization of English in her Berlfein Prize–winning piece, “It’s the Sociolinguistic Discrimination for Me.”

To read more, head to our website at refractmagazine.c.om and explore REFRACT’s extensive archive of new, nonfiction writing.

Illustration credit:

11/11/2024

What would it take to clean New York City? For such a daunting and seemingly inconceivable task, the solution must be radical. Andrew Waterhouse makes his vision clear in his piece, “A Modest Proposition.”

Waterhouse’s satire, a loose parody of Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay, “A Modest Proposal,” doesn’t suggest struggling families sell their children for food. Rather, in a similar vein, he argues that in an effort to rid the city of its grime and scum, a new virus must be unleashed to the public. Unhinged and preposterous, ludicrous and imprudent, Waterhouse justifies his proposal with the MTA’s intense campaign to clean the decades-old subway system during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To read more, head to our website at refractmagazine.c.om and explore REFRACT’s extensive archive of new, nonfiction writing.

Illustration credit:

$To wrap up National Book Month, the editors here at Refract Magazine have curated a selected list of favorites that they...$

10/30/2024

To wrap up National Book Month, the editors here at Refract Magazine have curated a selected list of favorites that they now wish to share with their readers.
We hope you add these amazing stories to your TBR lists and share with us your thoughts. Happy reading!

10/26/2024

Intertwined with themes of race, class, and immigration, Muhammad Elbadri illustrates the complexities of embracing himself and his identity in his Berlfein Prize–winning piece, “Ode to My Silky.” Writing on “the impact my silky has on a person’s perception of me,” Elbadri recounts his experiences, both present and in childhood, narrating his journey of how he discovered the aspects that formed his identity despite his attempts to hide and reject it.

To read more, head to our website at refractmagazine.co(m) and explore REFRACT’s extensive archive of new, nonfiction writing.

Illustration credit:

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