One Story

I'm going to indulge in a moment of self-promotion to promote something much more interesting and worthy than me: the marvelous magazine One Story, which will be publishing a story of mine this fall (probably in October).

There are lots of reasons to love One Story, even if you hate me. There is, for instance, the fact that they have published such fine writers as Kelly Link, Judy Budnitz, Alan DeNiro, Stephen Dixon, Binyavanga Wainana, Gregory Maguire, and many others. Their format is great fun -- living up to their title, they publish a single story in each issue, as a sort of chapbook. They're portable, convenient, not overwhelming, and sometimes even kind of cute. They have a blog. They tend to win awards. (Indeed, I first became aware of them when judging the Fountain Award, which this year they ended up winning.) At the AWP Conference in March, they had rubber duckies in an inflatable swimming pool, for no reason I could quite figure out except that rubber duckies and inflatable swimming pools were exactly what the staid halls of AWP needed. And editor Hannah Tinti gives extraordinarily useful feedback (or at least she did for me).

Therefore, today's Public Service Announcement is a simple but heartfelt one: One Story is awesome. Don't be afraid to subscribe!

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