On Nov. 17, The Auburn Circle, Auburn University’s literary and art magazine, published its new semesterly issue for fall 2025. This issue focuses on identities and relationships of life, and it is currently available to students.
The Circle published its first arts magazine in 1974, and it has since become a cornerstone of artistic work at Auburn. Each issue features a wide variety of student-submitted content, including poetry, visual arts, fashion and music. The submissions selected for print each semester follow a unique theme and tell a narrative through their organization.
The fall 2025 edition’s theme conveys the identities and relationships of life, structuring content into four distinct categories: “No One," “Someone,” “Anyone,” and “Everyone.”
“Every magazine in the past has had its own unique theme,” said Denison Justice, editor-in-chief of The Auburn Circle. “This one’s theme is kind of like the different levels of organization of life. Chapter one is more reflective of that cellular level, chapter two of the organism level, chapter three of the environment and chapter four with the biosphere, and that theme is also tied in with identity and relationships as well.”
The fall 2025 issue, featuring 100 full-color pages, includes over 70 unique submissions from Auburn students across the University. The magazine opens with the flash writing contest winning submission, “Why?” by Abigail Burnett, junior in chemical engineering. Theatre student Abigail Bowling wrote “Dernièrement” featured in the “Anyone” chapter, which was awarded the 2025 Circle English Award by English professor Justin Gardiner. Pre-computer science freshman Sara Jones illustrated the cover art for the front of the magazine.
“I think all of the submissions are really impressive,” Justice said. “‘White Light’ by Natalie Reynolds is really good in chapter four. There’s some really cool visual arts pieces. ‘Little Flock’ by Grace Corley was also really enjoyable. Walter Lloyd has some really good music in there, and there’s also a song called ‘Hold On’ by Weary Pursuit, which is also good. There’s definitely all sorts of cool pieces.”
Submissions for The Circle’s fall 2025 issue closed on Sept. 19. After the deadline, The Circle reviews the submitted pieces before selecting what media will be featured and structures the format and theme of the magazine. During this process, visual, written and musical submissions chosen for publication are paired together based on themes and content.
“Throughout the semester, our staff always goes through the same process to make the magazines,” Justice said. “We try not to do theme before selections are done. We try to be as objective to art and writing as we can be when it comes to selecting submissions in our magazine. And then, after we have developed our theme a little, our staff writes the chapter poems that start each chapter, and we have our graphic designers create the first copy. Our copy editing team kind of goes back and forth through it until we have a polished magazine that’s ready to send to print.”
The fall 2025 issue was officially released on Monday, Nov. 17, with the SNAPS launch party taking place that night to celebrate the accomplishment. The magazine was distributed on the Haley Concourse the rest of the week following the launch and will continue to be available until the release of the spring 2026 issue.
“We already have some submissions for the spring issue, and we expect to get a lot more,” Justice said. “We accept all sorts of submissions: poetry, prose writing, as well visual arts, like photography, painting and sculpture. We accept graphic design, fashion design, industrial design, interior design, architecture, film, animation and music. Something relatively new to the process is the fact we have a miscellaneous category now. So, students who have art that just doesn’t fit into any of the other categories, they can still submit it as miscellaneous.”
The Circle is currently accepting submissions for its spring 2026 issue. For more information and rules for submissions, visit the website.
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