I recently gave @astrolabe.ooo a visual overhaul I'm pretty proud of. I wanted to take nothing away from the universe viz but make it more grounded and better match the aesthetics of everything we've published over the last 3(!) years. And hopefully show we're in it for the long haul.
apologies for the re-re-reposts; our fingers are cold and we cannot type
So thrilled to see Veronica Tucker's “The Waiting Room At The End of the Universe” selected for the 2026 edition of Best Microfiction! You can read the story, part of the Whale asterism we published this fall, here:
www.astrolabe.ooo/tucker-the-w...
Hey everyone. Best Microfiction 2026 winners have been posted! We congratulate all the winners. Thank you so much to our brilliant Guest Editor for 2026, @dseuss.bsky.social ! www.bestmicrofiction.com? #FlashFiction #Microfiction #ShortStory #WritingCommunity #LiteraryMagazines #WritersNetwork
i wrote and submitted this in the bathroom of a party. 2025, what a year: moving out, playing tennis for the first time in years, witnessing djokovic still play legendary tennis, watching my parents separate, seeing a viet kid named learner tien winning left and right ... phew
for @havehashad.com
Starting the year with a complicated one - featured today on Poetry Pause @canadianpoets.bsky.social : poets.ca/a-bell-is-a-...
A brilliant new eco-cosmic poem from our Ice Floe guest editor and author Vikki. C. in @astrolabe.ooo (a new cool journal).
"butterflies loiter in a cold spell, confused between fall and the next life" @vikkicwrites.bsky.social
A group of blue-green dots on a dark blue background with lines between them to denote the shape of a "constellation" of Clepsydra
Astrolabe Winter 2025 -- Nnadi Samuel - "Honeysuckle; From Lugard's white, scented Hands" & "The Field of my Person, A Thing to be Conquered" Vikki C. - "Elegy for a Grown World" Susan L. Lin - "She Had Her Head in the Attic" Lisa Dailey - "Under the Sea" Binh Do - "The Angel of History" Didem Arslanoglu - "Nine"
The Clepsydra is live! As the year runs out, we hope you'll thieve away some time to spend with this wonderful group of prose, poetry, and artwork.
astrolabe.ooo
featuring...
@vikkicwrites.bsky.social
@binhdaur.bsky.social
@susanllin.bsky.social
Nnadi Samuel
Lisa Dailey
Didem Arslanoglu
Astrolabe @astrolabe.ooo (Fiction Nonfiction Art; pays) opened to submissions https://duotrope.com... #amwriting
Elegy for a Grown World Materialized by Vikki C. 21/12/2025. Of course there were others. Juvenile planets we fantasised, laid on our bare backs, dust streaming from our eyes—long before the train ride to meet each other again. To witness that trick of light along the river. The game we played of loving straightforwardly, past the silos, where smog equaled nostalgia and red skies triggered a girlhood alarm. Past fishless reservoirs and heronless fog, years later—the keening of icecaps against our knees. A fugue that blues the ear, straining to hear the whale’s song—fainter now from starvation. Still, we follow the river, seeking what we had to leave—the dark lake with two lilies at its navel, the summer of grapefruit the size of volleyballs, we halved—worms crawling out like drunken guests. Now, the knife just opens up two thick silences—white at the rind of its creased mouth. Who is holding out our halves to us these days? Is this why the river runs away? How I love you in reverse—before taxes and tallness, before towers, and bricks like loose teeth, raining on a parade. There’s a district now where the sky powders against the nape. A postmemory—the dear friend held in exile. The voice dredged of nectar, as butterflies loiter in a cold spell, confused between fall and the next life. Are these instructions for an emergency? Where to gather and crouch so the hawk-drone won’t mistake our pleasure for the animal kind—windwhipped on soft, bent limbs? It’s a game—you unname me, and we coax each other into the flow, which is sometimes a trick of old light that arrives because you are here, heaping sugar into your anxious brew, reading the news about another great flood. The waterline rising along the river that hasn’t yet vanished in your eyes. It is there, just harder now. A field of snow or lace in a fragile Pacific bowl, tilted towards my lap—and you, saying how it was always true and crystalline. Never just a game of languid bodies, sinking into too-soft depths.
Honoured to have a new poem out with the cosmic and beautiful @astrolabe.ooo!
Huge thank you to editors Joel, Jae and Astrid for including my poem 'Elegy for a Grown World' in the Winter 2025 materialisation 'The Clepsydra' alongside so many luminous works 🌌
www.astrolabe.ooo/c-elegy-for-...
a piece i wrote this summer. a final act of forgiveness. one step in a lifetime journey of healing.
for @astrolabe.ooo
A group of blue-green dots on a dark blue background with lines between them to denote the shape of a "constellation" of Clepsydra
Astrolabe Winter 2025 -- Nnadi Samuel - "Honeysuckle; From Lugard's white, scented Hands" & "The Field of my Person, A Thing to be Conquered" Vikki C. - "Elegy for a Grown World" Susan L. Lin - "She Had Her Head in the Attic" Lisa Dailey - "Under the Sea" Binh Do - "The Angel of History" Didem Arslanoglu - "Nine"
The Clepsydra is live! As the year runs out, we hope you'll thieve away some time to spend with this wonderful group of prose, poetry, and artwork.
astrolabe.ooo
featuring...
@vikkicwrites.bsky.social
@binhdaur.bsky.social
@susanllin.bsky.social
Nnadi Samuel
Lisa Dailey
Didem Arslanoglu
Astrolabe Best Microfiction Nominees --- Devan Murphy "Goatboy" Shana Ross "Annual Review" Carter Lappin "Sometimes You Can’t Help but Feel Like He Does These Things on Purpose" Veronica Tucker "The Waiting Room At The End of the Universe" Susan L Lin "She Had Her Head in the Attic"
Taking a moment to treasure our Best Microfiction nominees! Congratulations to:
Devan Murphy
@shanaross.bsky.social
Carter Lappin
Veronica Tucker
@susanllin.bsky.social
this perfect piece of spec fic in @astrolabe.ooo by @thisisguan.bsky.social in honour of his birthday. One of my favourite pieces this year. And by an Aussie too 🇦🇺🧡🧡🧡
”It’s hard to see her in the dark but you can still hear her song like a hook in your spine.”
www.astrolabe.ooo/un-sorrow-fo...
A gorgeous anthology of Canadian works from last year, and
I'm very lucky to have my bittersweet prose poem "Light of My Life" (originally published by @astrolabe.ooo) included alongside this incredible lineup of Canadian writers
We just hit our submission cap, so we’ll keep things open until the end of the day if you have something you’d like to sneak our way. Friendly reminder that we’re friendly and always pay for the work we publish!
astrolabe.ooo/submissions
Thrilled to have a new little prose poem floating around over at @astrolabe.ooo (and they *happen* to be open for submissions)!
With autumn comes the careening of the Whale, bringing tales of transition, transformation, and yearning.
Featuring work from: @msstefaniekirby.bsky.social, @shalinisingh.bsky.social, Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arowolo, Veronica Tucker, Eden Petri, David Capps, Emily O Liu, and Laura Walker.
astrolabe.ooo
Explore at the link in bio. And YES, the changing of the seasons means we're open to 150 submissions.
astrolabe.ooo/submissions
With autumn comes the careening of the Whale, bringing tales of transition, transformation, and yearning.
Featuring work from: @msstefaniekirby.bsky.social, @shalinisingh.bsky.social, Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arowolo, Veronica Tucker, Eden Petri, David Capps, Emily O Liu, and Laura Walker.
astrolabe.ooo
I’m still pinching myself that my small story is in this year’s Best of the Net alongside so many amazing pieces. Many thanks to the good folks at COMP for nominating it.
bestofthenetanthology.com/2025-2/2025-...
Great list of stories I need to search out - and litmags! @grist.org
@orionmagazine.bsky.social @diabolicalplots.com @clarkesworldmagazine.com @kaleidotrope.bsky.social @seizethepress.bsky.social @apparitionlit.com @apexmag.bsky.social @astrolabe.ooo
www.apexbookcompany.com/blogs/frontp...
One week from today! Free / zoom / mid-day break
New micros up at @mrbullbull.bsky.social!! Thank you for giving these micros a home! 🥰❤️
Each day this week, I’m sharing why I loved one of the pieces we published last week on @astrolabe.ooo as part of the Retrograde.
ICYMI, I have a new flash story out at @astrolabe.ooo.
It's about leaving a party with someone you just met, driving on highways at 1 am, the music up so loud you could sink into it forever.
Honoured to have materialized in the Astrolabe universe today: www.astrolabe.ooo/ross-annual-...
Astrolabe Summer 2025 --- Amanda Yskamp - "Gathering" Shana Ross - "Annual Review" Guan Un - "Sorrow for Youth" Eli Dowd - "They Buried Their Dead in Sitting Posture" Carter Lappin - "Sometimes You Can't Help but Feel Like He Does These Things on Purpose"
A touch late, but never forgotten, the Retrograde has arrived! With it comes signs of yellowing and desiccation, omens from the sun, but also some things Exceptional and worth gathering around.
As always, we encourage you to explore and delight in these works among the Universe: astrolabe.ooo
New story day! It's not everyday I get to join a Universe, but I'm so thrilled to join the Astrolabe Universe.
A flash story about leaving the party at 1am, driving down the streets with the music up loud, and that girl beside you, whose song you want to hear the end of ...
