“Asterisk is the little magazine of the San Francisco Bay Area — which is to say, we’re the little magazine of the world, a few years in advance. We put our scenes and subcultures in conversation with themselves, and with everyone else.” You can read more about them here. For their upcoming theme, they say, “Usually, we like to back up our claims with numbers, but right now, we’re in a more reflective mood. After all, the hot beige microsite of the summer is a papal encyclical, and it doesn’t have even one chart.
Right now, all eyes are on the Bay Area. The charts keep going up. The money is about to pour in. Yet there’s a pervasive sense that tech now lacks vision and moral character. We agree. Let’s see if we can change that in 120 pages.
To that end, Asterisk’s Fall 2026 issue is the theme of Flourishing. We are now soliciting pitches for articles, essays, and interviews related to any aspect of flourishing — think broadly.” They’re particularly interested in some topics: Morality and virtue; Relationships; Man’s search for meaning, and coping with human inferiority; Aesthetics and beauty; AI consciousness; Technology’s relationship to the world; and Scene reporting. See guidelines for details on each topic. They usually commission pieces at 3,000-5,000 words. The pitch deadline is end-July. Details here.