About
CA$ 7,696
202
In ancient Rome, an augur read futures in the flight patterns of birds. Now, Augur Magazine believes the stories we tell today are important to the futures we’re moving toward—and we want to make space for the stories and futures we need.
We are excited by writing that is difficult to classify: dreamy realism, surrealism, magical realism, slipstream, and literary scifi-fantasy/speculative fiction. Our goal is to bring together disparate genres, always exploring what-ifs and could-bes. We focus on publishing work by intersectional creators—especially emerging ones—and while we’re not refusing submissions from those who don’t identify as intersectional, we will always dominantly feature visible minority, disabled, queer, trans, female, and otherwise marginalized voices. Moreover, as we foster an international basis for submissions we'll always reserve spots for Canadian and Aboriginal/Indigenous creators.
This kickstarter will empower our first two full years and at least six issues of carefully curated content. That means more than 40 genre-skipping, intersectional pieces delivered straight to our subscribers’ inboxes.
Alongside doing good editorial work and producing a fabulous digital magazine, we pledge to provide those who work with us a humane, respectful submissions cycle; editorial work with a focus on listening and learning from our authors and readers; and a business model that puts our creators first. Across our editors and masthead, we are queer, trans, women of colour, immigrant, and disabled/neurodivergent. When we say that we want intersectional work, we mean it, and we’re motivated to bring together as many voices as possible within our publication.
Want to check out what we do? We put together our Preview Issue so you can see what we’re about. The content is available for free online, or you can get a fully designed, PDF ebook by contributing to any level of our campaign!
- A cross-genre collection of work encompassing dreamy or unsettling realist literature; magical realism and slipstream; and literary scifi-fantasy
- Bridging the space between literary fiction magazines and speculative magazines
- A focus on actively searching for, making room for, and publishing intersectional voices
- Regularly publishing new and emerging voices
- Seeking out Indigenous and Aboriginal authors and creators
- Adding a new paying market for Canadian speculative fiction while fostering a welcoming environment for the international spec community
- Always working from a place of respect, listening, and learning
- Directing the bulk of our funding towards creators and artists
$6,000 — Our first two years are funded. We’ll pay $50/story, $25/flash fiction piece, $20/poem, and up to $75/graphic fiction short. That means we'll publish at least 40 creators, and we’ll also hire our artists to produce more beautiful illustrations for Augurian pieces.
$8,500 — Our issues will be 33% bigger, meaning we’ll publish over 50 creators over two years. We’ll also give small honorariums to an otherwise volunteer slush reader team.
$12,000 — Print Anthology! We’ll add a beautiful print anthology to our Year Two lineup, featuring reprints from our online publications and pieces from an extra submissions cycle. And that’s not all—everyone at the $50 level and above will receive the digital copy of this anthology, and will have the option to receive the print copy absolutely free (well, after shipping ;) )!
$15,000 — We’ll pay our creators 25% more than their original payments AND we’ll send supporters at every level some behind the scenes content as we create our print anthology.
$20,000 — We’ll pay our creators 50% more than our original payments, bring our per-issue creator count to 12 (meaning more than 60 creators over two years), and publish serial fiction on our blog. AND, on top of everything else, we’ll run an annual prize for intersectional authors, with NO entry fee, and offer $500 in rewards per year. Because screw appropriation prizes. We want a #WeNeedDiverseBooks/#OwnVoices prize.
To show we put our money where our mouths are, we've already produced our first issue—the Augur Preview Issue, a collection of reprints from a variety of magazines. The content of the Preview Issue is available online on our website, and you can get a fully designed PDF by backing us at any level.
Take a look at our Table of Contents:
- "The Man Who Killed Coen" by Lawrence Stewen (originally published in The Spectatorial)
- "Change as Seen Through an Orrery of Celestial Fire" by Michael Matheson (originally published in Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen)
- "Old and New" by Saquina Karla C. Guiam (originally published in Sea Foam Mag)
- "The Wedding of Snow, Earth, and Salt" by Kate Heartfield (originally published in audio by Podcastle)
- "Pretty White Snake" by Cathy Smith (originally published in Anthropomorphic Dreams and in the author's collection of short stories, Kateri's Tales: Based on Haudenosaunee Folklore)
- "Leapt" by Terese Mason Pierre (originally published in The Spectatorial Zine)
- "Palingenesis" by Megan Arkenberg (originally published in Shimmer)
- "Shortly Before the End" by Kim Goldberg (originally published in Ryga)
- "I received a lost minute invitation" by Christa Couture (originally published on the author's blog)
- "Oct. 27th 70 to Union Station 07:35" by Emily Izsak (originally published in the author's collection of poetry, Whistle Stops)
- "In-Between Home" by Janice Liu (originally published in A Side of Rice)
The Preview Issue also features art by staff artists Maybelle Leung, Ann Sheng, Mari Zhou, and Lorna Antoniazzi.
Want to read before you back us? Click here to go to the Preview Issue online site.
Think we're the kind of magazine you could see yourself taking home to mom? Fabulous! That's exactly why we've prepped a huge variety of rewards for our backers to choose from. Our backers can get:
- Digital PDF copy of the fully designed Preview Issue
- Single Issues & Subscriptions to Augur Magazine
- Electronic Swag (Desktops, Augurian Hero Banners)
- Thank yous & being listed on our website and in our magazine
- Query, short story, and novel reviews
- Half page ads in Augur
- Physical swag (Bookmarks, post cards, tote bags, t-shirts, etc.)
- Limited edition print copies of the Augur Preview Issue Zine
- Art prints
- The original canvas paintings of Ann Sheng's Fantastic Landscapes series, produced for the Augur Magazine website
- Handwritten thank you letters from our editors
- As a stretch reward: The digital copy of the Augur print anthology + the option to ship a free print copy straight to your door
See below for a selection of the swag* up for grabs! Including the physical Zine, the digital preview issue, our original canvas paintings and a selection of bookmarks and other assets!
Rewards will begin being delivered in November 2017 or sooner. The first piece to be delivered will be the Augur Preview Issue, and we'll release regular updates for the remaining rewards on your tier.
*Final design subject to change
The majority of our funding goes directly into the pockets of our creators and contributors. An approximate breakdown is that 70% goes into the creation of our issues, while 10% goes to kickstarter fees and 20% goes to the administrative & marketing budgets that let us exist!
Risks and challenges
The biggest risk we have is that it's hard to run a literary magazine these days. Funding is sparse, and survival is a matter of luck as much as it is anything else. We plan to combat this with planning in the long term—like kickstarting for two years instead of one, so next time we need funding we'll meet the qualifications for national grants. It helps that our editors are in publishing, marketing, and law, meaning that we're made up of the core pillars that put together any good literary endeavour—and we'll use our professional prowess to ensure Augur survives come hell or high water.
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Funding period
- (31 days)