Aster Lit
Issue 1—Spring 2021
Starlit Awards in Poetry and Prose
Each issue, we’d like to specially recognize submissions that the editors of Aster Lit found outstanding either in mastery of craft or in originality of voice. This issue, both the winners of the Starlit Award in Poetry and the Starlit Award in Prose were awarded $50. Congrats to Yvanna Vien Tica and Christina Li for your amazing work! We can’t wait to see where you go in the future!
Scroll down to read the rest of the Spring 2021 Issue.
Yvanna Vien Tica—Poetry
sampaguita as alien species
Pastured
Thanksgiving in Tagalog
Christina Li—Prose
Always Human
Poetry
Alizeh Arshad—27th August 2020 (The day of the Karachi floods)
Alyssa Simone—The Way I Loved You
Amna Muhammad Hussain—War when you’re too sober for it
Eryn Mei Peritz—Won, Too
Gerald Ewa—How a young Nigerian sees Joy
Janine Liwanag—astronomy lesson #1
Jemima Shaiful—Frail Stars—Shattered Teacup
Jon Michael Vincent Casaba—Butterfly
Kim Völker—Persephone’s Arrival
L. Y. Rinn—my name, more river than rain—unknown (i want more)
Maham Jamil—The Last Time
Natalie Chan—TRUE/FALSE
Oliver Smith—how I fell out of love with the girl in the mirror
Rogail Genturalez—falling in love
Ruo Wei Lim—Reading Mary Oliver
Van Aguilar—Igniting Fire
Yvanna Vien Tica—sampaguita as alien species—Pastured—Thanksgiving in Tagalog
Prose
Christina Li—Always Human
Eryn Mei Peritz—Finally
Eryn Mei Peritz—Science isn't optional
Safi Ullah Usman— The Road to the Future
Note from the Editors
We received three hundred amazing submissions from over twenty countries on five different continents, and we wish we could have shared them all! If your work didn’t make it into this issue, we’d still love to have your writing in our future issues or on our Instagram @aster.lit. (In fact, we’ll be featuring some honorable mentions that didn’t make it into the magazine there!)
Putting together this magazine and watching this community grow has been a life-changing experience for us at Aster Lit. Thank you to everyone who made this possible, and especially, thank you—the readers—for your support. You inspire us everyday. We hope you enjoy the constellation of voices we’ve gathered in this issue regardless of if you read one poem or all 26 pieces. Whether it’s a perspective you never considered or a string of words that takes your breath away, we hope this issue is one of discovery for you just as it was for us.
Follow us on Instagram @aster.lit for updates on when submissions for our Summer 2021 Issue will open or just to stay involved with this amazing community!
We love you. Your voice matters. Keep telling stories.
Sincerely,
The Aster Lit Team