About

The Missing Slate Characteristics

The Missing Slate is an entity on its own. It stands about a little higher than any geographical boundary, and can be found listening when you need to be heard. It transcends editors and contributors. In fact, it is not created by their contributions, only enriched by them. Every time a piece of art or writing makes it way to TMS as if a wisp of a longing, it joins together with many others like it to make up what is essentially TMS.

Our team

Meet the Editors at TMS

Nwa Rizvi

Co Editor-in-Chief

Nwa Rizvi (she/her) (Syed Nwa Abas Rizvi, Nwa Abbas, and Nwa A. Rizvi) is a highly compartmentalised being who is an educator for special needs, sustainable development, and multilingualism. She is daughter to a poetess and a man who gave up being an artist due to societal pressure, a sister to an artist and activist, and she has mixed up the passion from all to create a perfectly chaotic and never-ending supply of energising angst. She is a short story writer and aspiring novelist who has been published both at home and abroad. Kittens, puppies, and hyper independent parrots follow her home. She is hearing impaired and doesn’t like crowds.

Nwa looks at the world around herself and her mind churns up narratives using the people and places she sees. She doesn’t know how it happens. She only hopes she can keep up with the speed with which the voices in her mind demand to be heard.

Kristia Vasiloff

Co Editor-in-Chief

Kristia Vasiloff (she/her) is a poet, avid-reader of everything, activist, and homebody. She has been published in presses, anthologies, and her writing has been supported by her state’s Poetry Society. Kristia’s power chair is named Batmobile 2.0, after the late Batmobile power-scooter of her younger years. She writes because she needs it, she writes for folks who also yearn for a home outside their body. Kristia is living her best queer life with her amazing Spouse and two cats in North Carolina, USA.

She is extremely humbled to be passed the torch for The Missing Slate as an Editor in Chief. She is giddy for upcoming projects for the magazine and its readers, submitters, and new-comers. Kristia is honored to continue to share The Missing Slate Magazine, a needed space designed to amplify the voices of marginalized writers, with y’all.

Taqdees Mela

Nonfiction Editor

Taqdees Mahmood Mela (she/her) is an award-winning writer and academic, who fights the dark forces of patriarchy and classism one story at a time. She is a K-drama/Anime enthusiast and is obsessed with the intricacies of language. She was working as an Assistant Editor for Daily Times, Pakistan, and Clamantis – the MALS journal at Dartmouth College. Her work has been published by Folio Books, Clamantis, and Daily Times, Pakistan.

Rameen Saad

Essay Editor

Rameen (she/her) is a writer and researcher from the city by the sea, Karachi. After graduating from the University of Chicago with an MA in Comparative Literature, she has focused on the intersection between the Global South and post-colonization. Her work centers on the female body and the gravity of choice, as well as explorations on grief and memory. Beyond her research, she enjoys cooking for her friends, yoga in the sun, and absurdist theater. Her reasons to wake up are movies that make you cry, crab rangoons, and the warmth of the people she loves. Her favorite novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, is the sole reason she is currently based in Chicago.

Khadija Hassan

Flash Fiction / Prose Editor

Hello everyone! I’m Khadija Hassan (she/her) and I will be serving as your Editor for The Missing Slate. I am currently a freshman at the Forman Christian College, Lahore, Pakistan, and pursuing two disciplines; Psychology and Literature. Much like our community here, I love reading and writing and have an affinity towards both poetry and fiction. I believe that as writers, our dianoia and sensitivity have the power to change another’s perspective and empower them to alchemize their experiences into art. With a focus on women and the marginalized, I hope to work towards providing the ‘deliberately silenced’ and ‘preferably unheard’, as Arundhati Roy puts it, a safe space to share their stories.

Saniya Khalil

Art Editor

Saniya (she/her) is a medical student fighting hard to keep her literary and creative spirit alive and fluttering in her academic life. She runs her own poetry page amidst writing for different journals and magazines.

Ever since she was little, libraries were her favourite place to be. She loved the magic of translating thoughts into words or images. Her poetry, be it prose-form-poems, shape poems, blackout poems, revolve around expressing and understanding emotion, life, and art.