Starborne
The Journal of Autocosmology
A literary and artistic movement exploring what it means to live as a conscious expression of a 13.8-billion-year universe.
Issue Two submissions open through August 14, 2026.
Submit Your WorkAbout the journal
What Is Starborne?
Over the last century, science has transformed our understanding of who we are. We now know that every atom in our bodies was forged in ancient stars, that the tissues of our brains emerged through billions of years of cosmic evolution, and that consciousness itself is not separate from the universe but one way the universe has become aware of itself.
And yet our literature, poetry, memoir, philosophy, and visual art have only begun to explore what this realization means from the inside. Starborne exists to help give birth to that new body of work.
Inspired by the emerging field of autocosmology, Starborne publishes writing and art that explores human experience from within an evolving universe. Rather than simply creating work about the cosmos, we seek work that arises from the lived experience of being one unique expression of it.
We believe that a new way of understanding ourselves calls for new forms of creative expression. Our hope is that Starborne becomes more than a journal—it becomes a gathering place for artists, writers, philosophers, and thinkers helping to shape this emerging cultural movement.
A New Way of Seeing
What Is Autocosmology?
What is it like to be the evolving universe in one particular human life?
Rather than treating cosmic evolution as abstract scientific knowledge, autocosmology explores it as lived experience. It is autobiography that remembers it is also cosmology. It is philosophy grounded in evolutionary history, poetry written from inside a living universe, visual art that reveals the intimate continuity between self and cosmos, and stories that dissolve the boundary between the personal and the planetary.
As Brian Thomas Swimme writes in the inaugural issue, autocosmology emerged not as the invention of a single individual, but as a collective discovery born from years of conversations among writers, philosophers, artists, and cosmologists exploring what it means to inhabit an evolutionary universe. With Starborne, that conversation continues beyond the classroom and into the wider world.
Contributions
What We Publish
We welcome work that explores the meeting place between personal experience and the larger unfolding story of the universe.
We are especially interested in:
- Essays
- Literary nonfiction
- Memoir
- Fiction
- Poetry
- Philosophy
- Visual art
- Photography
- Graphic narratives
- Experimental forms
- Audio, video, and digital or interactive work
We are also interested in scholarly and theoretical work exploring autocosmology, as well as critical writing that examines literature, art, film, or culture through an autocosmological lens.
Above all, we seek work that is intellectually alive, artistically ambitious, emotionally honest, and willing to explore the radical intimacy between self and cosmos.
Inaugural issue
Issue One
The inaugural issue features original work from Brian Thomas Swimme, Carolyn Cooke, Peter Reason, Geneen Marie Haugen, Ezekiel Fugate, Kathleen M. Osburn, and many other writers and artists. Together they explore themes of emergence, pilgrimage, ecology, consciousness, creativity, mortality, and cosmic belonging.
If you are considering submitting work, we strongly encourage you to spend time with the first issue. Because autocosmology is still an emerging field, the journal itself provides the best introduction to the spirit of the conversation we hope to cultivate.
Read Issue One (PDF)
Issue Two
Call for Submissions
Submissions are now open for Issue Two.
We invite prose, poetry, visual art, scholarship, criticism, and experimental work that reflects an autocosmological perspective. We are looking for work that creatively weaves together personal experience and larger cosmological processes, revealing the interplay between individual lives and the unfolding universe.
Because autocosmology is still taking shape, we are not looking for adherence to a fixed definition. On the contrary, we hope contributors will help expand and deepen the field through their own original insight, imagination, and creative practice.
Submission Guidelines
Eligibility
We accept fiction, nonfiction, poetry, visual art, and other original creative work. Written work must not have been previously published elsewhere. Simultaneous submissions are welcome; please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
File Formats
Written submissions should be PDF or Microsoft Word files. Visual artwork should be JPEG. Audio, video, and digital or interactive work will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Length
Prose: up to 3,000 words (double-spaced). Poetry: up to 5 poems. Visual art: up to 5 pieces.
Deadline
August 14, 2026
Compensation, Response Time, and Rights
Compensation and submission fee: Contributors are not paid, and there is no submission fee.
Response time: Submission decisions will be completed by August 21, 2026.
Rights: Authors retain all rights to their own work.
Join the conversation
A growing conversation
Starborne is more than a literary journal. It is an ongoing experiment in discovering what kinds of stories, poems, images, and ideas become possible when we understand ourselves as participants in a living, evolving universe.
If your work explores the place where autobiography meets cosmology—where personal experience opens onto Earth's story and the larger story of the cosmos—we hope you'll add your voice to this growing conversation.
Submit Your Work