What is it like to be the universe in human form? Starborne publishes prose, poetry, visual art, and theoretical essays exploring the intimate relationship between personal experience and the unfolding story of the cosmos.

Over the past hundred years, science has revealed something astonishing: we are not simply located in the universe—we are the universe, in human form.

This shift in understanding stems from now widely acknowledged truths: that the atoms in our bodies were forged in ancient stars. That the complex tissues of our brains are continuous with the slow self-organization of matter across billions of years. That consciousness itself is not an exception to the cosmos, but an emergent expression of it.

Starborne exists as a space to explore what it means to live inside this new awareness—not just conceptually, but through felt experience, artistic practice, and creative inquiry. What might it mean to be a local expression of a 13.8-billion-year evolutionary process? What shifts when we begin to sense our lives not as separate from the cosmos, but as one way the cosmos is becoming aware of itself? And how might we leave traces of this dawning awareness in language, image, and form?

To help frame this daring experiment, Brian Thomas Swimme and Carolyn Cooke have introduced the term autocosmology. The word points to a shift—from telling stories about the universe, to telling stories as the universe, in its localized human form. At the same time, we should emphasize that there is no single, orthodox definition of autocosmology. This is not a genre with preset boundaries, but a living question we must explore together. Still, to offer some waypoints, here are five possible definitions - each one partial and open to further evolution:

• Autocosmology is creative expression that asks: What is it like to be the evolving universe in one specific human form?

• Autocosmology is the genre of writing and art-making that arises when cosmic evolution is not just an abstract idea but the very ground of experience.

• Autocosmology is art that reflects and enacts time-developmental consciousness—a mode of awareness that sees everything, including the self, in light of cosmic evolution.

• Autocosmology is what happens when autobiography breaks orbit from the isolated self and begins to track its entanglement with planetary and cosmic forces.

• Autocosmology is the voice the universe finds when it begins to speak from within your particular nervous system, with all its unique memories, longings, and creative impulses.

Ultimately, our hope is that Starborne becomes more than a journal—that it grows into a site of shared experimentation for those who feel compelled to give voice to the radical intimacy between self and cosmos.

If something in this vision resonates with your own wild endeavors—if you are creating from
that edge where story meets stardust—we hope you’ll reach out. This is an open conversation. We’d
love to be in it with you.

With gratitude, wonder, and delight,

Ari Makridakis & Ezekiel Fugate
Editors-in-Chief


Starborne: the journal of autocosmology

We are seeking poetry that speaks to the experience of being the universe in human form.

Autocosmological poetry

We are seeking fictional writing that speaks to the experience of being the universe in human form. 

Autocosmological fiction

We are seeking nonfiction work that speaks to the experience of being the universe in human form.

Autcosmological nonfiction

We are seeking visual art that speaks to the experience of being the universe in human form.

Starborne: the journal of autocosmology

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