CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Volume II: “What are you asking at the end of the world?”
For our 2026 issue, we seek essays, poems, and visual art addressing inquiry burdened by entropy. As writers and artists investigate issues from personal to profound, they face circumstances beyond their control. What are you asking at the end of the world? Why should your audience listen to what you have to say? And what if none of it matters in the end?
Space is a an online journal that publishes written, visual, and digital work composed by undergraduate students at The University of Alabama and other institutions. It is a celebration of student expression arranged intentionally to affect the thought and action of local and global publics. Submit to Space!
This essay explores the idea that Alabama magic is the mode by which we perceive the state's natural beauty. It comes from the joining of limestone and water, both of which are abundantly present in Alabama. This magic was born of a time when ocean covered the state, and it remains to this day. While the quarry industry has made limestone common in our day to day lives, we almost always strip it of its connection to water, thus stripping it of of its magic.
"There are no specific moments I can pinpoint that trigger thoughts of you; they just happen, and they haunt me. You are my ghost. We are so close, yet so distant. I feel such a connection to you because you are my biological mother, but I don’t even know who you are."
Laine's "Street Photography" is a poem that focuses on the everyday, mundane aspects of living in the city of Paris, intermingling with other humans. It uplifts the ordinary action of observance, prayer, and what it means to come from a powerful creator who loves every single wrinkle of creation.
Photographs by Caden Rogers show beauty, quiet, and connection in the busy city, reminding us to lift and lower our gaze.
This work of narrative nonfiction walks through the memory of a birthday when everything seems to go wrong. "The first sign is the news report." The power goes out, the order for the cake is messed up, and the Barbie topper catches fire. However, in the midst of this chaos, joy is much closer than expected.
This essay presents dually an analysis of Virginia Woolf's speech "Professions for Women," given to the London chapter of National Society for Women’s Service in 1931, and an introspective take on the crescendo that is the author's struggling passion for writing. The essay takes symbolic magnifying glasses to issues of perfectionism, femininity, and writing, against the backdrop of one of Woolf's most iconic pieces of writing. In the process, the secrets to the writing process are revealed, along with the author's epiphany about what it means to be a woman writer, what it means to chose the path of a writer, and what it means to navigate this choice amongst a storm of personal insecurity.
This piece reflects on unrequited love, expressing the emotional pain of loving someone who doesn’t feel the same way. The speaker shares their inner thoughts and feelings, revealing both hope and heartbreak. Through a mix of poetic language and vivid imagery, it explores themes of attachment, longing, and the difficulty of accepting the reality of being unloved. The writing captures the deep emotions involved in loving someone who doesn’t love you back, showing how love can be both beautiful and painful.
"La La Land is both my favorite and least favorite movie. I ecstatically watch two people hell-bent on not being together fall in love anyway, and my heart breaks every time they fall out of it. I love love, especially earned love. I don’t believe in love at first sight. You may feel an initial attraction that is almost overpowering, but that’s not love. Love is when you learn someone’s whole person, what makes them unbearable but so easy to care about. Where you want to witness their entire life, be there every step of the way, and fight for and alongside them."
This is a virtual zine that highlights the positive effects of nature on humanity. It is visual and informative.
"My dad and I started a round of choreography. I would tell him I liked the book, and my dad would ask me if I wanted it. In the most innocent, nonchalant voice a ten-year-old could muster, I would say, 'Yes, please.' My dad would then start walking towards the counter to check out. The sun would hit my face as the automatic doors opened, and I would walk out feeling like I’d cast a spell or performed a trick with my black and white plastic bag swaying in the wind."
"When we tie history and rhetoric together, we have a platform to convey ideals about any moment in history and how that history has impacted societies. By acknowledging this understanding of history and being cautious about how we use rhetoric to frame narratives, we can work to discern messages and perspectives that harm others and foster positive discourse within our society. We are all witnesses to history in our lives. It is up to us to call out what we view from the past being replayed in front of us and to plant new ideas of unity and common understanding among all groups of people, regardless of our differences."
"The current Post-Punk wave starts with a unified sonic aesthetic. Guitars don’t play power chords—they play angular, monophonic riffs. They repeat these riffs over complex drum patterns. They form a groove. Not a groove you can dance to—no Daft Punk 'Get Lucky' or club anthems, and no cathartic heavy metal headbanging either. A keep-to-yourself kind of groove: subtle head nods, maybe a tapping finger as you listen on headphones on the bus ride home. There’s dissonance, off-kilter rhythms and rare time signatures, but you internalize the pattern. The groove is something to hold onto."
This poem is a reflection of rural midwestern life, specifically how it has been affected by the widespread use of pesticides and herbicides, such as glyphosate. Contrasting imagery with metaphor, this piece highlights the sense of helplessness that has burdened so many farmers, who, in trying to make their living, have destroyed their own health as well as that of the nature around them.
This essay explores the difference between "silence" and "quiet" through personal stories and reflections on connection, drawing from Paul Simon’s “The Sound of Silence” and philosopher Martin Buber’s ideas in I and Thou. It highlights the loneliness we can feel in crowds and the contrasting comfort of quiet moments by ourselves. The author emphasizes the importance of deep listening, sharing openly, and building real relationships to break through the silence that often surrounds us.
This essay explores the ever-changing relationship between humans and spaces through an analysis of Emily St. John Mandel's novel Station Eleven. The pandemic within the novel changes how people use the built environment, as well as how human characters are affected by space. The crisis in Station Eleven upsets ideas of how spaces should function, rendering many spaces dysfunctional, according to Michel de Certeau’s theories of spatial practice and “haunted places.” This leads to the key question: what makes a home? Between houses, airports, and caravans, the novel supports the idea that even transitory, impermanent, or dysfunctional spaces and objects can shift to become home; they are not necessarily fixed by preconceived notions. On the other hand, these notions, embedded in preexisting spaces, also have the power to shape humans’ emotional—and consequently physical—experiences through memory. This essay follows the characters’ relationships with built environments before and after the world’s collapse—such as experiencing a stark office space as an escape, an airport as a neighborhood, and houses and hotels as uninhabitable—enforcing the understanding that humans and the environment change each other as the world changes.
"Dune is the story of how philosophies can be molded to benefit the one liar who speaks convincingly. The Fremen demonstrate that when an ideology becomes motivated, activated, and weaponized, it becomes susceptible to manipulation that inevitably feeds power to a select few 'representatives.' If we are to overcome our present struggles as terrestrials, we must heed Frank Herbert’s warning about instilling a widespread movement that seeks to solve universal problems, even if we believe in the movement as truth."
This essay pulls from Rosi Braidotti's theory of the posthuman predicament, as well as Kyle Parry's theory of assembly. From these established concepts, it argues that Dungeons & Dragons offers a solution to the posthuman predicament by working as an assembly. Johnson breaks down different key elements that construct a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, from the story itself to the players who gather around the table, and highlights how each of these elements come together through the Dungeon Master to make an assembly that fosters empathy and belonging for those involved: her proposed solution to the posthuman predicament.