For the featured billboard on the homepage.
Fittingly, old haunts surround a couple of skeletons on the cover of Motif’s Halloween issue, as designed by digital artist Matthew Bernier of Barrington. They are the names of businesses now gone: Goldy Records, Chez Pascal, and The Watershed, to name a few. “Some of these places were my haunts when I was growing up,” […]
Looking for something to keep you up at night? Whether you’re hunting a quick campfire story or ready to spend long hours reading at the hearth, here are some scary stories to trouble your nightstand this spooky season: Novels for the nerves Rosemary’s Baby – What’s scarier than a demon baby growing inside of you? […]
We reach a point in the Autumn Equinox where the veil is thin and spirits take flight. As we wander this Earth, most of us rarely look for signs of history from the deceased past; time and people dissolve into space as darkness comes quicker at night. How can we convey messages from the past? […]
Let’s start with the basics here. We all know the commercialized image of a witch on a broomstick, flying around on a full moon with her black cat. But what if I told you witchcraft is real, and closer to you than you may realize? And what exactly is witchcraft? Ariadne Weaver, an authority on […]
The leading character of the audio series The Diaries of Netovicius the Vampire was spawned by an offhand comment while creator Hugo Pierre Martin and his partner, Sonja Kelly, were walking around downtown Woonsocket a couple years back. “My partner said she saw someone who looked like a vampire driving a lime green Cadillac,” the […]
It was the constant tiredness I had been feeling for months, the fear I felt for anyone who looked like me, and the hunger for hope that brought me to the Subway across the street from Kennedy Plaza. It certainly wasn’t the bland, cold, sandwich-like product I gnawed through while I waited for the parade […]
The following is based on a true story. In 1994, Fidel Castro allowed thousands of Cubans to leave the island on makeshift rafts. I was living on Grand Cayman, writing for the daily newspaper. With no place to stay, the over 1,200 rafters ended up in a dusty campsite in the middle of Grand Cayman, […]
My Mexican grandfather was born in Austin, Texas, on August 19, 1929. I know this because I have his birth certificate, issued by Travis County and the Texas State Board of Health. But no, rather: I have a scan of his birth certificate, one that exists in the public records and is downloadable if you […]
“Man is born free, yet everywhere he is caged.” Barbed wire, concrete walls, and guarded toll booths — even with friendly guards — confine people to the nation-state of their birth. But why? Borders are human inventions, arbitrary lines that separate us not only politically, but also socially and culturally. I’ve always believed that to […]
What a pleasure and an honor to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, alongside community treasure Marta Martinez, in this issue of Motif magazine. Poetry is an integral part of any truly vibrant cultural landscape, and the writers featured here are among the best contemporary poets writing today. It is heartening and important that poems be included, […]