Augur Issue 8.1
Fateful Reinventions
AUGUR ISSUE 8.1
Issue 8.1 of Augur Magazine draws our attention to the very act of creation itself—from the spark of a new idea to its unpredictable aftermath. Our creators portray universes where the world is ending—or has ended—and community is all we have. Ghostly voices abound in those communities—not only human ones, but robotic remixes, interstellar noise, and sounds emanating from the very earth. Those voices tell of what must be preserved in our histories, of what joys to seize in the present, and foretell how we might take what is known and make something new to meet our future.
Check the links below for samples from our longer pieces. If you want to dig in now, the full, designed issue is available now for purchase!
Fateful Reinventions by Toria Liao
Orders by Grace Seybold
Beachside Sundays by Ash Wahking
If gender is a performance, then all the world’s a stage. Either we should get season tickets, or go on a whim by Jonathan Bessette
Strange Children of the Sour Gas by EC Dorgan
Phi Nang Lum by P.W. Jarungpiterah
The Belly of The Rock by Busayo Akinmoju
Welcome to Spruceway by Brianne Battye
Elegy with Transformation Myth by Sarah Hilton
The Epitaph of Antigone by Fatima Shafiq
Letter from Distant Star to the Earth by Jesse Holth
Dark Night Suffused with Stars by Huijia Li
2025 Microfiction Contest Winners
THE CARTOGRAPHY OF LANDS THAT SHALL REMAIN LOST
by Nadia Born
The cartographer travels to unknown lands, tasked by the emperor to inventory anything of value. Here the forest grows thick and she makes virgin paths in her yellow gumboots. She marks rivers blooming with pearls, villages built on pink stone, trees with leaves as wide as wingspans.
In these lands of wonder, she begins to survey her heart.
Soon silver rain unspools from the clouds and the cartographer doesn’t think twice. She unfolds her maps and lifts them to the sky. She imagines the emperor's fury, his failed ambitions.
The ink dark-trickles into the earth the way new roots might.
THE BISON RETURN WITH THE PRAIRIE GRASS
by Shantell Powell
The bison return with the prairie grass. Pawpaw and butternut trees reach skyward between downed transmission towers, and eastern caribou have their second coming. Cattails spread across a sunken parking lot and the spring bubbles back to the surface.
Peepers sing out their horniness, whooping cranes cavort, and ducks baptize their heads while mooning the sky. Deer walk through an abandoned mall overgrown with ostrich ferns and polypod as bracken spores regreen the cracked tile floor. Sweat bees hum their hymns.
Amen, the waterways are clear, and fish fry devour mosquito larvae beneath lily pads. Beneath the healing, unpolluted sky.
“…I’M AN ARTIST, SO I CAN ADD COLOURS TO THE MOON”
by Taran Bhartt
Traditionally, starships were unmanned during intergalactic voyages.
Rations. Waste. No consent from generations born midflight. Simpler to mentally upload crew and leave maintenance to droids.
And yet…
The bio-printer hummed.
Lal Singh’s digitized mind had accessed sensors galore, but it was only now, decanted into his body, that he could see.
Redshifted antimatter thrusters: palette knifed alizarin crimson.
Relativity squeezing every star into a cluttered constellation ahead: pollock splatters of phthalo blue.
The cosmic microwave background blueshifted visible at 0.99999835% lightspeed: a gauzy flash of titanium white.
The cameras had their view; Lal would find his truth in paint.
NADIA BORN writes about girls who are birds, mothers who are ghosts, and other mysteries. She won LitMag’s Anton Chekhov Award and New Letters’ Editor’s Choice Award. Her stories are featured in Electric Literature, New Orleans Review, Mississippi Review and elsewhere. She also has dark fairy tales appearing in Small Wonders, The Orange & Bee and Flash Fiction Online. Find her online at www.nadiaborn.com.
SHANTELL POWELL is an swamp hag/elder goth who grew up in an apocalyptic cult on the land and off the grid all over Canada. She is an alum of the Banff Centre for the Arts, The Writers’ Studio at Simon Fraser University, the LGBTQ+ Novel Immersive at GrubStreet, Roots. Wounds. Words., and the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. Her writing appears in On Spec, Nightmare Magazine, The Deadlands, NonBinary Review, and more. She’s an Aurora nominee, a Brave New Weird winner, and Dystopian Fiction Competition winner. Her TBR pile is decades old and bound to kill her if it falls. When she’s not writing or making things, she wrangles chinchillas or gets filthy in the woods. http://shanmonster.dreamwidth.
TARAN BHARTT spends his free time writing about time-travelling tourists, eldritch orcas, and other run-of-the-mill topics. His poetry and short stories have been featured in the Cootes Paradise Writers’ Charity Anthologies, Augur Magazine (hey, a self-reference!), and—if things go according to plan—in a literary journal near you. He can be reached at the decidedly uncreative Instagram, Bluesky, and Tumblr handles: taranbhartt.
