Literary Magazine: The Future!

Next Lab’s Digital Storytelling Guild is excited to begin its first guild project with the launch of their Literary Magazine, The Future! The purpose of this magazine is not only to tell exciting, thought provoking, and complex stories, but also for guild members to improve and expand upon their skills as writers and collaborators.

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The Future! is an ongoing project that will span across the year and years to come, with a new issue every three months. Every new issue will have its own topic: a broad idea centered around futures thinking or emerging knowledge that will inspire writers to tell a meaningful story.

Short Story Writing: Contributors create original stories, whether they be fictional, nonfictional, essays, poetry, comics, or any other medium they think would represent their story best. The topics of these stories are guided by the theme of the current issue.

Collaborative Workshopping and Revision: A big part of the writing process is found in the revision. Working together to workshop stories is important to improve the stories themselves while also becoming familiar with the editing process and working together toward the best possible versions of these creations.

Graphic Creation: Making the literary magazine’s content appealing is one thing, but making it visually appealing is an entirely separate prerogative that is equally important. Guild members work together to ideate, create, and edit visuals to supplement the stories, break up the text, and tell mini-stories in and of themselves.

This project, while it was started by the Digital Storytelling Guild at Next Lab, is not just limited to guild members. The guild wants to showcase stories from across the community and hear stories of all kinds. Whether it be an informative short essay, a riveting fictional short story, a comic, or even a short-form story like a made-up advertisement, all stories are welcome. Everyone is encouraged to participate!

Project showcase:

• The Future! Issue 1

Launch date:

• Oct 1, 2025

Contributors & Credits:

• Shelby Cavanaugh Toft, Next Lab Associate, Digital Storytelling Guild Lead
• Lakshya Dharwal, Next Lab Associate
• Czyra Argonza, Next Lab Associate
• Ryann Woods-Sweeney, Next Lab Associate