a journal of arts & sciences
The CORTEX Collective is an experimental journal for the arts & sciences run by undergraduate students at Yale University. As a publication, we write science fiction & critical essays about STEM through a lens of humanities – or humanities through the lens of STEM. Each issue, we house collections of science-inspired fiction and poetry, illustrated by on-staff artists and scored with original soundtracks by musicians.
As a team of editors, we write and peer-edit everything for our issues together, and we collaborate to produce projects that take our publication beyond the page. During our first semester, we designed a shared alternate universe and wrote an anthology of collected documents. During our second semester, we built an art installation based off of the fairytales we wrote, pictured to the right. We are looking to reinvent what the interplay of language and art can do for the sciences.
CORTEX is dedicated to being a space for writers and scientists to experiment alongside each other – a creative laboratory.
Yale Daily News | CORTEX Magazine establishes campus presence with community events
Yale Daily News | CORTEX Magazine debuts to bridge science and the arts
Creative writing
Explore a world where cytoarchitecture has been converted into a real-life city under a dome due to climate change, or a series of diary entries from a patient with a degenerative brain disease. We want long-form stories that can turn into storybooks and mini-novellas as well as shorter poems.
Each piece of writing will be illustrated like a storybook by staff artists and be scored with its own soundtrack by staff musicians.
Critical essays
We’re also looking for writers to submit critical essays that examine a central question relating to ethics, science, and the modern world. What role does AI play in creative writing in the future? How do we create memories in virtual spaces that feel temporary? We aim to grapple with open-ended science-related questions, but from an interdisciplinary approach that heavily involves the humanities. These can be submitted to our blog.
Collaborations
We are always looking to collaborate with outside organizations. example, we might partner with an architectural group and ask architects to submit visions of how they envision a house or field in the Metaverse. Inspired by these, we will ask for submissions from writers of flash fiction that take place in these designed houses.
stay curious
send us your reading recommendations & letters to the editor & criticisms at cortexmagazine@gmail.com
we want to hear from you
the sublime
“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” – Ray Bradbury
Edit, score, write, or illustrate for CORTEX.
a print & digital publication
based at yale university
for artists
illustrate long-form science-fiction stories; write poetry about the natural world; compose soundtracks for floating cities and planets
scientists
help writers design diagrams of future cities; consult on fictional medicines and machines; create schematics for the physics of impossible universes
& you
if you want to work with cortex, but there isn’t something listened specifically for you, please reach out!
cortexmagazine@gmail.com
