Applications are now open to join our team.

CORTEX works together as a team to craft a collaborative issue each semester. Then, we design an art project that brings our writing to life.

The application deadline has been pushed back to Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023.

  • Fiction Editor

    For those who love developing short stories, flash fiction, plays, and other forms of prose-based creative writing. For those who who have chemistry with contemporary fiction, particularly speculative and dystopian fiction. We are searching for individuals with their eyes on the horizon, but the heart to collaborate, to contribute to something larger than an individual story.

  • Music Composer

    Musicians on-staff help create original soundtracks to score the pieces that are published in each issue of CORTEX, envisioning how these science-fictional worlds will sound to provide an immersive experience. For those who can match sound with story, either composing or playing another’s piece in a way that complements the writing, envisioning the audio waves of a universe.

  • Nonfiction Editor

    For those who love reading WIRED and the New Yorker and are fascinated by long-form journalism and nonfiction that intertwines personal experience and data-driven research – who want to make persuasive and driven arguments. For those who are interested in utilizing philosophy, ethics, art history, and the humanities to address complex scientific issues, or vice versa. We are searching for individuals with large ideas, but the ability to translate them effectively and assist other nonfiction editors with strengthening and widening their arguments.

  • Poetry Editor

    For those who see particles in poetry, who can feel the resonance between words, letters, and symbols. We are searching for individuals with their eyes on the horizon, but the heart to collaborate, to contribute to something larger than an individual poem.

  • Visual Artist

    Visual artists illustrate custom pieces for each piece accepted for publication, working with the writer throughout the process to visualize their world. For those who find inspiration in the beautiful skeletons of numbers, the blue-stained fans of dendrites, and the buttery webs of lichens atop trees to make their artwork come alive.

Responsibilities

The above five roles are asked to maintain the following responsibilities. These are genre editor positions.

  • Attend all-staff meetings and team-specific meetings; participate in brainstorming sessions, workshopping sessions, production sessions for publication or related projects, and votes

  • Draft, revise, and submit genre-specific creative work on a timely basis as specified by other editors

  • Maintain timely responses

  • Take initiative to collaborate with other editors and experiment with your genre’s work as a whole

  • Uphold open, creative environment

A public interest meeting will be held at 7 p.m., Sept. 11, 2023, in the Trumbull College Common Room.

Applications will open for the 2023-24 school year on Sept. 11 and close at midnight on Oct. 22. The application deadline was pushed back from Oct. 15.

As a collective, everyone on staff creates and peer-edits. Everything we create, we create together – engineering, restructuring, and renovating the foundations of each issue. As a member of the editorial staff, you’ll be working with others to help them refine their pieces, but you’ll also be responsible for creating work of your own. This process is flexible, artistic, and experimental. Be ready to be producing and destroying what you create.

Applications are open to Yale undergraduate and graduate students of any year, including those on gap years.

To apply for a position on our team, please answer the following questions in a .docx or .pdf attachment.

  1. Why do you want to join CORTEX? (100 words or fewer)

  2. Answer any 2 of the following 6 following questions:

    1. Pitch us an idea for a piece of writing, music, or art.

    2. Tell us about a paradox, mystery, enigma or an inexplicable concept that intrigues you. 

    3. What’s something you found beautiful today? 

    4. Dwell on our website and find something that you find thought-provoking, and respond to it in any artistic medium. Experimental responses are welcome and encouraged!

    5. Given infinite time, money, resources, ability, etc., what would you create or invent and why?

    6. What is a quote that is meaningful to you and why?

Please attach a sample of creative work specific to the genre(s) you are applying for.

  • for poetry: 3-5 poems

  • for fiction: up to 20 pages, double-spaced

  • for nonfiction: up to 20 pages, double-spaced

  • for music: 5-7 minutes

  • for art: 3-5 pieces

Starting Sept. 11, you can apply here. In this form, you will be asked to rank the 3 positions you are most interested in, and then upload your application and your work samples.

In the email body, please include your name, residential college, & year.

If you have questions, please email us at cortexmagazine@gmail.com.

Apply now

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.

– Ray Bradbury

The universe is as beautiful as an echo – expansive, but microscopic. Blades of wheat whispering against each other in the yellow sun, the corona radiata of white fibers fanning out like a ray in our skulls, pulsing with the careful electric puzzles of life, the parallax angles of stars that poke through the wispy blue water of night. We seek those who are fascinated by these images, but are curious about the stories they might hold – of grief, anger, loss, love, and sacrifice, of the tender lobe of a mother’s ear even as wires curve into her mind. Like these.

All Summer in a Day – Ray Bradbury

Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes

The Paper Menagerie – Ken Liu

The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin

Oryx & Crake – Margaret Atwood; the Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

the Great Silence

apply by Oct. 22, 2023