Letter from the Editor

by Leon Perniciaro in Issue Twenty-One, January 2026

Dear Reader,

You tell your daughter that she is right. That humans really can fly. You started the conversation with what amazing creatures ducks are, that they can walk on land and swim in lakes and soar through the air. Water fowl are all magicians, you say. All finefeathered wizards, and there is nothing else quite like them.

But she says, No, Papa, humans can do that too. The magic is just different. Instead of wings and webbed feet, we have planes and boats, wheelie shoes and pogo sticks. But we can walk and swim and soar. The magic is still real.

In your hands, dear reader, you hold a bo...

Letter from the Editor

by Leon Perniciaro in Issue Twenty, July 2025

Dear Reader,

The last few months have taken roughly ten thousand years, a time dilation so bad it's got me shouting Murph! and reading Dylan Thomas poetry. The thing I hated about Interstellar was that they named the bad guy Dr. Mann and told us "he was the best of us" over and over. All Matt Damon was missing to broadcast his evil was a mirror-Spockian goatee because as metaphors go, Dr. Mann is as subtle as a frying pan to the head, a real this-is-your-brain-on-drugs level of metaphor, and please, are there any questions? But time dilation is real, and dry land is not a myth, I've seen it, a...

Short Fiction Review — March 2025

by Danai Christopoulou in Issue Nineteen, March 2025

"Something Cruel" by Gabrielle Emem Harry (Will This Be a Problem? The Anthology, Issue V)

"When she looks up, she feels like she's falling into the sky, into all that red, swimming in blood and Fire." Minika, a member of the Usiene, crosses The World Invisible to bring back a punishment who has escaped, only to realize she may have gotten the wrong person. In what is one of the many gorgeous stories featured in Will This Be a Problem? The Anthology, Issue V, a collection of African speculative fiction edited by Olivia Kidula and Somto Ihezue, Harry paints a vibrant tableau of retribution and ...

Letter from the Editor

by Leon Perniciaro in Issue Nineteen, March 2025

Dear Reader,

I am so very happy to report that our Kickstarter was a success and we are funded through the rest of 2025 to pay pro rates! I am shy by nature, but please take a moment to hear my ragged voice cheering across time and space in celebration that we managed it. And you know what? It wouldn't have been possible without you, so yes, you should absolutely be cheering as well. Let us join in a roaring chorus of hooping and hollering so loud that we shake the rafters of creation. Who knew I could get so excited about fundraising?

But I kid, I kid, what I'm actually excited about is that ...

Interview with Terese Mason Pierre

by Leon Perniciaro in Issue Nineteen, March 2025

Leon Perniciaro: How’d you get involved with Augur?

Terese Mason Pierre: So I live in Toronto, spent most of my life here, and I went to the University of Toronto for my undergrad. And while I was at the University of Toronto, I was involved in a number of student groups. By the time I was in fourth year, I was in two choirs, directing one of them. I was volunteering at a hospital. I was doing so many things. And among the things, I was a poetry editor for a student journal called The Spectatorial. It was the only genre magazine on campus, and I worked as a poetry editor on that magazine for a...

Interview with Lindz McLeod

by TJ Price in Issue Nineteen, March 2025

TJ Price: Hi, Lindz! Thanks for agreeing to engage with these questions! I’m fascinated by your work, and have been ever since I first read a short story submission of yours (“The Sunbathers”) for Cosmic Horror Monthly, in which it was inevitably published. (Issue #42, Cosmic Horror Monthly) I was immediately struck by the polished, assured prose and the vibrant, daring voice behind it. The descriptive language was a delight, a host of metaphor and simile that roared with abandon across the entire sensory spectrum. Following my read of this—even before it was accepted for publication!—I immedi...

Short Fiction Review — November 2024

by Danai Christopoulou in Issue Eighteen, November 2024

"And She Had Been So Reasonable" by Rachel Bolton (Apex #147)

"There is no one thing that makes a woman. Don't believe people who tell you otherwise." In this deceptively detached story, a nameless Woman is struggling to escape an abusive marriage, while Bolton invites the reader to shape the form and features of the main character in their mind. The result is a frankly terrifying reminder of the universality of violence and misogyny (which feels somehow more realistic the more the story embraces its speculative element at the end), but also of our indomitable need to resist. Certainly hits di...

Letter from the Editor

by Leon Perniciaro in Issue Eighteen, November 2024

Dear Reader,

All my words have left me. My tongue has slithered sluglike from the hollow of my mouth.

It's hard to write in times like these. Hard to speak. But there is something inexplicable in the written word, something ineffable. Fiction and poetry are the canvases on which we paint our hopes and dread. In systems that would silence us, writers scream with the scribbling of pens, the soft clacking of keyboards. "Writers are among the most sensitive, the most intellectually anarchic, most representative, most probing of artists," Toni Morrison once wrote. "The ability of writers to imagine...

Short Fiction Review — September 2024

by Danai Christopoulou in Issue Seventeen, September 2024

"Sibilance" by E.G. Condé (Interzone #299)

Planetary ecologist Dr Ahim Hodei is brought to Jupiter to find the cause between the quickly diminishing levels of a Helium isotope vital to the continued function of Earth's nuclear reactors. But soon after his arrival, and with the help of his partner, he realizes that something uncanny is happening with the planet—something that has affected every other human there. Rich with stellar prose and sharp criticism on all the ways the greed of corporations wouldn't hesitate to extend beyond the stars, Sibilance delivers a powerful crescendo of humanity'...

Letter from the Editor

by Leon Perniciaro in Issue Seventeen, September 2024

Dear Reader,

The summer is ended, and we are not saved.

Okay, that sounds a little dramatic. Let's try that again.

Dear Reader,

The summer is ended, and we can now drink tea and wear our autumn jackets.

It lacks a certain gravitas, sure, but that's why no one has ever asked me to found a new religion. It'd be more pumpkin spice and less eternal damnation, and then where would we be?

One more time:

Dear Reader,

Summer is ended, but science fiction and fantasy go on.

There, that's better.

In this issue, you will find a slew of stories, a plethora of poems, and a host of heartbreaking, hopeful,...