Instafiction: Website Of the Week

Yesterday, Jeremy and I were honored to receive some kind works from Hayden's Ferry Review, a literary journal based in Arizona State University. On their blog, Instafiction.org was selected as their Website Of the Week, and highlighted the work we've been doing. Here's the full write-up:

"How would you like to enjoy a short story every weekday morning? Well, look no further than Instafiction.org to begin your day.

Instafiction is dedicated to providing daily stories that are suited to diverse reading platforms, as the stories are formatted to take up a “single page,” which sounds like the perfect length to enjoy with morning coffee before the day begins in earnest.

Within the past week Instafiction featured stories by Jeanette Winterson, Adam Levin, Harlan Ellison, BD Feil, and Shellie Zacharia. And with archives stretching back to July of 2011, one could explore all that the site has to offer. And best of all, no subscription is required!

But that’s not all. Instafiction is also encouraging “authors, literary magazines/websites, publishers and other parties who are interested in seeing work featured” to get involved here. What better way to give back to this site than offering suggestions for future stories or—perhaps—submitting your work? (April 9th, 2012)"

I love posting recaps of this type of attention, not out of any egotistical back-patting, but because it's exciting to know that other people and journals appreciate what we do, and this particular post captures exactly the essence of how we imagine people enjoying our story selections. Instafiction is slowly approaching its first full year in existence. We're still a small operation, but the attention has always maintained a steady growth, and we do have some fiercely dedicated readers. We haven't received any submissions yet for original material, but I'm hoping that will change soon.

Thank you to the staff of Hayden's Ferry Review for your kind words and dedication to quality short fiction.

Cultural Transitions: An Instafiction Interview With David Yost

As I've mentioned many times, one of the best benefits of working on Instafiction is the element of random discovery. In many hours of story research, there's a fluctuating mix of tedium, dead ends, and stories that seem promising but turn out to be the opposite. In August of 2011, I happened to come across a story called The Counterfeit, a 2010 piece in Asia Literary Review. What seemed like a standard mystery/crime tale turned out to be a stunning layer of contemporary criminal justice in foreign countries and a study of a cultural divisions that yield frightening implications. After the story was featured, we received a very thoughtful e-mail from the story's writer, David Yost. It was one of our first communications from someone we featured, and was therefore an indication that the project could effectively bridge the gap between a daunting number of readers, writers, and publications.

Out of curiosity, I did more research on Mr. Yost, and his work and publications are nothing short of impressive. He has been published in a variety of journals, including American Short Fiction and The Minnesota Review, and has done work with the Peace Corps and Amnesty International. His stories explore a wealth of international ideas, with an emphasis on cultural differences and immigrant transitions. This last idea is prevalent in All Their Riches (featured by Instafiction on December 26th, 2011), a Sun Magazine story about Karen immigrants in Milwaukee. After visiting his website and finding out more about his life and work, I contacted him via e-mail to request an interview. He graciously agreed to answer my questions, and his answers provided genuine insights into his work and creative process. He was also kind enough to share details of his forthcoming novels and translations, and the breadth of his work combines the rare dual threat of entertainment and education.



Jamie Yates: Jeremy [Bushnell] posed this question to me over the summer, and I find it to be an effective ice-breaker: If you're comfortable sharing, can you describe what you would consider to be the worst piece of writing you've done?

David Yost: I can give you the exact sentence: “But in the rainy season, the landmines slid and shifted in the mud, transforming the hills of Karen State into a smorgasbord of death.” But of course, the magic of writing is that nobody ever has to see these boneheaded rough-draft sentences but you.

JY: You've previously volunteered with the Peace Corps, and you're active with Amnesty International. Since your short fiction draws heavily on international politics and the plight of refugees, did your work inspire you to write fictional takes on these issues, or did you just combine two passions?

DY: My interest in writing came first, actually, but after I made my first trip to the Thai-Burma border, I knew I’d be writing about that for a long time. I worked there in a hospital for victims of the ongoing Karen State conflict, and I could hardly believe the things that I saw and heard: forced labor, mass rapes, whole villages destroyed, children dying of landmines and preventable diseases that have been eliminated in almost everywhere else on earth. And yet despite having gone on for six decades, leaving hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced, despite the region having the highest mortality in all of Asia and the most landmines per square mile in the world, no one talks about this war; most people don’t even know it’s happening.

Getting to know people from a conflict zone changes your life. It’s one thing to see something like that on the news and say, “Oh, how awful.” Meeting them in person forces you to acknowledge that they’re as human as you are, and that the destruction of their hometown is every bit as terrible as the destruction of your own hometown would be. And once you’ve acknowledged that, how can you not help? It’s an experience I want to bring home to readers however I can.

JY: In your story The Counterfeit, a young man faces a harrowing ordeal with a foreign police system. What was your inspiration for this piece?

DY: The usual hodge-podge. One night, a friend told me about his nervousness exchanging money for his students; it was such an obvious “What if…” that I had a finished outline figured out before I’d even finished walking home. I’d once had a development colleague who had gone overseas to put Kantian theory into practice; bits of him went in, too.

JY: Do you feel that immigrant experiences vary depending on the region or country, or is it a generally collective experience?

DY: I suppose you can draw broad similarities between any cultural transition experience, but things vary widely between nations, groups, and even individuals. Karen immigrants are portrayed in immigration office handbooks as a group that has particular difficulty in adapting to the US because of the comparative modesty of Karen culture, particularly the strictures on asking for help. Yet I’m still in touch with friends and former co-workers who have adjusted quite smoothly.

JY: You write as an American inhabiting the role and feelings of contemporary Karen immigrants in All Their Riches. Is there a contemporary Burmese writer whom you feel serves as a spokesperson for the people?

DY: Wendy Law-Yone is probably the most acclaimed Burmese writer on the world stage, and her Coffin Tree is excellent. I’m not aware of any Karen authors writing fiction in English, though Zoya Phan’s recently published memoirs are an excellent first-person look at the conflict.

JY: The Last Days Of Menilek II has traces of politics, but is one of your more explicitly historical pieces. When writing, do you think in broad thematic terms (such as "political" or "historical"), or do you put more emphasis on a more concrete plot idea?

DY: I usually start with an accumulation of raw material that catches my interest, and trust that a theme will emerge later. I read about the electric chair he had imported to Ethiopia, and that got me started reading more about his life; I probably read seven or eight biographies just to write those four pages. When I had enough interesting details—the bizarre treatments of his international medical staff, the strokes that caused a secession crisis, the rumors of witchcraft—I started drafting, later whittling down to only my favorite details.

JY: You're working on a translation of Massa Makan Diabaté's The Lieutenant of Kouta. Is this your first translation? If so, what themes or plot points do you feel will speak to English language readers?

DY: It is my first translation, and I’m happy to say an excerpt from it just appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review. I think The Lieutenant of Kouta is, quite simply, one of the funniest books I’ve ever read; it’s raunchy, fast-moving, and ruthlessly satirical. Yet it also asks some serious questions about cultural conflict, as its Malian protagonist finds himself caught between the French colonial government, the traditional Malinké aristocracy, the town’s imam, and the colony’s growing independence movement.

JY: Aside from colloquial and structural differences, what is the most challenging aspect of translating a novel?

DY: Translating anything into a synonym-rich language like English is a time-consuming process. I’m lucky to have found a skilled (and far more fluent) co-translator in Shane Auerbach, and he and I can sit and argue about the precise difference between, say, “struggled with his conscience” and “wrestled with his conscience” for hours at a time.

Another unique challenge of translating The Lieutenant of Kouta is that Diabaté himself is writing in French instead of Malinké, and so he’s already translated these idioms and cultural concepts into one foreign language. To give a small example, a hangar-like shade roof called a gwa is a common outdoor structure for Malian households. Diabaté usually calls this a hangar in his French novel, but to avoid confusing readers, Shane and I bypassed the French to give a clearer English description of a gwa, a “shade roof”.

JY: Would you be willing to share any thoughts on your own novel in progress?

DY: Sure—it’s called The Altruist’s Children, and it’s the story of two well-intentioned American volunteers who travel to the Thai-Burma border, only to find themselves pulled into the violence of the civil war. It’s based in part on a series of interviews I conducted while working there, and I plan to donate any proceeds to the Mae Tao Clinic, the Thailand refugee hospital at which I used to work.

JY: Are there any people or regions you wish to explore further in future novels or short stories?

DY: Too many for one lifetime! Right now the story I’m dying to write is about the Australian “Emu Wars”, in which the Australian government sent armed soldiers to eliminate its growing emu population. But I’m also got pieces in the works about Satchel Paige’s stint with the white religious commune/traveling baseball team “The House of David”, and Swedish explorer S. A. Andrée’s disastrous attempt to cross the Arctic Circle by balloon. My second novel, which is also in progress, is the story of a voluntarily homeless Karen immigrant who becomes an unwilling media sensation when he saves the deputy mayor of St. Louis from a mugger (tentative title: A Kingdom Lost for a Drop of Honey). Lastly, I have some research on 1960s Uruguayan resistance fighters left over from The Altruist’s Children that I’m interested in building on. But in all honesty, if you close your eyes and pick a country at random from the map, I probably want to write about it; researching new topics is my favorite part of being a writer.

*****
On behalf of Instafiction, I am very grateful for David Yost taking the time to answer these questions, and I am looking forward to his future projects.

Instafiction On Longreads

Instafiction has yet another major market appearance this week. Editor/founder Jeremy P. Bushnell wrote up synopses of our five favorite stories of 2011 on behalf of the excellent curatorial site Longreads (beware of this site; even if you're the most casual of readers, there's enough material linked to move one to tears). The folks at Longreads have been very kind to us, linking and retweeting our selections from the very beginning, and now offering Jeremy the chance to expand on some of the more vibrant pieces.

The original link is here. And this link is a compilation of multiple lists of 2011's best long form writings. Enjoy and support!





"Instafiction's Jeremy P. Bushnell: My Top Fiction Longreads of 2011" (Originally published in Longreads, December 27, 2011)

1.) "Backbone," David Foster Wallace (The New Yorker)

During his lifetime, David Foster Wallace made massive contributions to the worlds of fiction and nonfiction alike, and I still miss his presence in the world acutely. The Pale King was a towering book of my summer, and although it didn’t quite yield the pleasures that a truly finished work might have, many of its fragments and episodes had the power of great short stories. See, for instance, this chapter, published as a standalone piece in The New Yorker.

2.)"Zone One," Colson Whitehead (excerpt, Esquire)

Whitehead’s Zone One is a great 2011 novel about government, bureaucracy, urban space, and human population. Oh yeah, it has zombies in it, too. Esquire gave us the first 20 pages—detailing a four-zombie attack on the book’s protagonist—right before Halloween, but it’s just as good a read now, at year’s end.

3.) "Female Explosion Syndrome," Jessica Forcier (New Delta Review)

Women all over the globe begin spontaneously combusting. Men don’t. Feminist? Fabulist? All of the above? Either way, this one stuck with us. Thanks to New Delta Review for publishing it.

4.) "The Empty Room," Jonathan Lethem (The Paris Review)

Lethem hasn’t put out a short story collection since 2006’s How We Got Insipid, but he’s still writing short fiction, and this year he placed a memorable tale of domestic collapse with the Paris Review. The setup: Upon moving his family into a sprawling farmhouse, a father makes a decision: one room will remain empty. “The empty room is like a living organ in our family’s house,” he claims, although in actuality it becomes the hollow core around which the family implodes.

5.) "Becoming Deer," Rachel Levy (PANK Magazine)

This fall, in the Chicago Reader, our Associate Editor Jamie Yates praised this story (from PANK Magazine) as a story that straddles the line between “the realistic and the mythical” and derives strength from each. You could also say it does the same with the line between the human and the animal. All this line-crossing makes the story into a kind of tangled skein, humming with tension. Taut, terse, and eerie: the best of a certain kind of experimental work. **

I think I speak for Jeremy when I say we're excited to carry Instafiction into 2012. Thanks to our readers and the excellent literary community for the excellent work that we find and share.

Chicago Reader: Culture Vultures

This has shaped up to be an excellent week for Instafiction. Our Twitter and Facebook pages have experienced some small measures of growth lately, and we've been extremely happy with our dedicated readers and supporters. Jeremy and I have e-mailed some press releases to a few publications and websites, hoping to get feedback, some possible acknowledged support for our endeavor, and more exposure to people looking for a good variety of short fictions. One of the releases I sent went to the esteemed Chicago Reader, and I was offered a chance to write one of their weekly Culture Vulture features, a revolving assortment of Chicago based writers, actors, and artists who share what they're consuming, creative-wise.

For this, I had to select a certain literary magazine to write about, and I kept coming back to PANK Magazine. Jeremy recently selected two of their stories for our daily Instafiction links (Rachel Levy's Becoming Deer and John Jodzio's This Is All the Orientation You Are Gonna Get), and the stories in the magazine are some of the best, most consistent pieces of writing. So in addition to having Instafiction's name in such a respected Chicago newspaper, it was extremely satisfying to share the name of what has become one of my favorite literary journals. I'm sharing my piece below, but please visit the original link (or, if you're in Chicago, pick up the paper this weekend) for other pieces. Alongside mine are excellent recommendations for a Thanksgiving weekend of "Deadwood" and the upcoming productions of the DePaul Theater School.



Chicago Reader Culture Vultures: (Originally published November 24, 2011):

"Researching literary magazines is often an exercise in repetition. For every genuinely innovative print journal or webzine, there are, quite literally, dozens of tired attempts at "edgy writing" failing to stand out or offer anything beside the claim of being different. With this in mind, PANK Magazine has forged an impressive spot in the online literary community.

"Bios are boring," states its Twitter description. Although this is a defiant statement, it reflects the magazine's lack of pretense. With the exception of themed editions, the only real mission for PANK is quality short fiction. The stories are genuinely heartbreaking and compelling, the contributors work in a variety of genres, and the end products get the most out of the realistic and the mythical. Rachel Levy's story "Becoming Deer" offers a truth lying in the soul of any great piece of writing: "Slice open a word, and it will bleed." PANK Magazine's writers and editors do this with a measure of increasingly rare consistency."

***

In their wonderful Thanksgiving blog post, the magazine offered us some kind thanks for our article. Because of this weekend and its quick descent into holiday madness, I'd like to ask serious readers to think about small presses and journals this year. If you have readers on your Christmas lists, do some research and give subscriptions to some of the better journals out there. Not only will you expose your friends and family to some under the radar works, you'll also be financially supporting organizations and writers who need it.

A Plea to Literary Magazines and Journals

Since beginning my work with Instafiction, an obvious realization has been affirmed: the world of literary journals, both domestic and international, is its own version of Jorge Luis Borges' Library Of Babel (it was no accident that Jeremy selected this story as the introductory piece for the website). When we began the project, I quickly found some excellent stories featured online, and my already great enthusiasm multiplied. Just as quickly, I ran into several walls. Publications, both esteemed and obscure, tend to feature 'archive' tabs, yet many of those links take the reader to a list of the previous issues, with no previews or true archives. Jeremy and I have exchanged dozens and dozens of e-mails as we've continued with Instafiction, and some of the most passionate exchanges of ideas centered on the lack of online availability. Jeremy toyed with the idea of writing a "rant/manifesto," and I also felt strongly enough to make my own opinions heard, and that's what this essay is about. In my research of the past few years, most critiques of literary magazines come in the form of dissatisfied writers who are tired of rejection letters. At worst, these are just snippy arguments, but at best, said anger has led people to create their own journals or websites. I love the world of short stories and publications; the last thing I want readers to think is that I'm raving. I also don't want to shoot myself in the foot: the openness of a lot of publications is one of the reasons Instafiction exists in the first place. Therefore, I want this to be a plea, with the critiques coming in the form of tough love.

Economically, if an organization maintains both a website and an actual print publication, the editors and publishers need subscriptions to survive, not to mention the noble goal of trying to provide writers with rewards for their efforts, rewards above "publication and a free year of issues." The question is: outside of immediate friends, families, and supporters, how do these publications get subscriptions? With the demise of bookstores, the viable market of impulse buyers is dwindling. As a bookseller, I was one of those customers: my bookshelves have more than a few literary magazines purchased on a whim. Granted, it's not financially feasible for most people to subscribe to multiple journals. However, having issues available for public browsing has certainly led to a select percentage of purchases. In today's world, publications have done their best to strike a balance between physical and digital copies. If more and more of these reputable outlets are going to be strictly digital, or see the majority of their work consumed online, it is seemingly obvious that making a portion of the work available for free would help expand readership.

Yes, there's still a problem of media consumers wanting everything for free, which doesn't help in an economic sense. This isn't a new problem. In the 1930s, baseball teams didn't want to air radio broadcasts, fearing that making their product available for free would mean that fans would stop coming to the actual games. It took time for owners to realize that expanded exposure would lead to greater audiences. Some critics feel that all information and creativity should be free, since it has the potential to be re-worked and manipulated for even more examples of creative outputs. My plea is not to have all publications revert to complete, free archives....however, I have come across several that have done so, and most of us wouldn't complain if this was the case across the board. Personally, I'm all about the happy medium, and I feel that most niche publications would benefit from at least some free material. Of course, it all depends on the quality of the stories, poems, and essays. The majority of the websites I've browsed have at least some redeeming quality. More availability would lead to more website hits, and potentially more income than relying on a small circle of subscribers.

I wish I could take credit for the following argument, but this is Jeremy's idea: with a lot of literary magazines offering the sale of back issues without archival samples, some are making logical mistakes. With rare exceptions, who is going to buy an old back issues sight unseen? Good, revered publications have their share of collectors and completists. For the random web browsers who stumble upon a given site, wouldn't the odds of a purchase increase with more comprehensive samples? Again, it's up to a given organization to make that decision. But returning to the baseball example, offering more can do more good than offering nothing. The New Yorker, for example, can get away with limited free material. For a fledgling literary magazine, virtual closed doors can be harmful.



Am I being selfish? Yes, actually. With Instafiction, I've seen too many promising literary magazines with no archives, and therefore no way for us to promote what could be an area worthy of more attention. Jeremy and I have had decent success in reaching out to publishers and writers, accommodating folks who are more than willing to help by creating web pages or navigation tools to make a story available in a web-friendly format. Our "selfishness" is actually a desire to promote. We're behind the scenes, and our goal is to feature terrific fiction, as well as give exposure to writers beyond the usual Facebook pages or Twitter feeds. While asking for requests for available material has been fruitful, sometimes time is limited. If stories were available and worthy, they'd be featured. But with no way to know, sometimes it makes more sense to simply move on to other sources.

At the risk of sounding sappy, I very nearly titled this piece "A (Tough) Love Letter to Literary Magazines and Journals." But really, this is true. From publishers down to readers, the majority of these small writing markets are not created and consumed for money, but for the passionate base of readers and writers who want to see quality work out in the world. Our work with Instafiction aside, it's a joy to be able to stumble upon a particularly creative website or piece of fiction, especially not knowing it existed ten minutes before finding it. Even if audiences remain small but dedicated, the potential to reach out to more people should be one of the guiding forces behind literary magazines. Again, the desire to produce income based on the sales of current and back issues is understandable. However, stories and poems aren't sold like groceries or lawn equipment. So I humbly urge these publications to open their doors, give their writers the exposure they deserve, and in time, hopefully create an open atmosphere of creativity and reading for everyone involved. I've also seen too many story websites that haven't been updated in years, probably due to folding and not being able to continue as a source of writing. I sincerely hope that the smallest of markets continue to succeed, and exposure/availability can only help, not hurt.

(NOTE: The photos I've taken and used in this piece are strictly for illustrative purposes. I'm in no way directing any of my above opinions toward the publications featured in the photographs.)

Announcing the Debut of Instafiction

I'm excited to announce the launch of Instafiction, a website created and designed by Jeremy P. Bushnell. The goal of the site is to provide a quality piece of fiction everyday, available via RSS feeds, online, social media platforms, and mobile reading devices. I was humbled to be invited to join Instafiction as a contributor and associate editor, and so far, it's been a (rewarding) challenge to find pieces of fiction to promote. Our goal is diversity and quality with both classic and contemporary fiction.

From the About Us page:

"Instafiction.org provides one quality short story each weekday morning, formatted in a single page, for ease of use with services like Instapaper.

Our aim is to help short-form literary fiction thrive in the information ecology of the 21st century. To achieve this aim, we use social media and other network technologies to present short fiction in a manner designed to work with the expanding diversity of reading platforms and applications.

We drew inspiration from exemplary sites doing similar work for long-form nonfiction, specifically the great Longform.org and Longreads. But these sites largely stay away from fiction, and so we've decided to step in and fill what struck us as a need.

We encourage authors, literary magazines/websites, publishers, and other parties who are interested in seeing work featured on Instafiction to get in touch. (We're also looking for donors and potential advertisers.) Thanks for reading."

So please pay us a visit for an excellent short story every weekday. You can subscribe for an RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.