Guest Author - Sharon Cullars

Once upon a time, The Atlantic Monthly could make a short fiction writer’s career. In it’s venerable history, the magazine has published fiction from many of the greats including Twain, Welty and Faulkner and has created careers for newer writers, including Caitlin Flanagan and Mark Bowden. However, in 2005, the magazine decided to cut out fiction entirely from its regular issues, only publishing pieces in its newstand-only annual edition. Still there are those bastions for the short story, Harper’s and The New Yorker that continue to publish short fiction. Also, tons of online publications and ezines, some more esteemed than others, vie for well-written short stories. But most hardcopy magazines, including a lot geared toward women, have gone the way of The Atlantic and have cut back if not totally eliminated short stories from their table of contents.

Today, books of short fiction are published less and less. I know because I’m looking for some good compilations out of the New York houses to review, and they are harder and harder to find. Once upon a time, a career skyrocketed for a writer of good short fiction; nowadays, publishers want full novels or at the least, novellas. Publishers and agents aren’t particularly looking for fiction with word counts less than 17,000. Now, Stephen King can still push a book of short fiction; Joe Blow not so much. You want find many if any collections on best seller lists for the simple fact that not many readers prefer short stories.

Short stories arose out of American publications, gaining popularity with works from Edgar Allen Poe and his contemporaries. But the market in decades past was able to sustain magazines who published short works. The market today is drastically changed as advertisers seek out magazines with a large subscriber base. And subscribers who are willing to invest time and patience into reading a novel just don’t seem to connect to the short story form. For today’s audience, plot seems more key than characterization. Ironically, audiences direct shorter attention spans that might have been key to short fiction toward television viewing and the Internet surfing. In the 19th century, serialized short fiction was as popular as a soap opera is to today’s contemporary audiences.

So, is there a place for writers of short fiction? Yes. Literary magazines still look for new voices to shake things up. And genre short fiction still has a place in online ezines, some of which search out new authors or established authors who push the envelope and present a fresher angle on well-worn plots. This is especially true for sci-fi and fantasy publications. Zoetrope, a literary magazine founded by Francis Ford Coppola, is open to submissions of no more than 7,000, hoping to find new material for movies. Horror fiction can find a home with publishers like Cemetery Dance.

The best angle to finding a place for a particular work is to search out short fiction magazines at al ocal bookstore or library. Read the stories included to get a feel for the voice the magazine is searching for, than look for the contact information either toward the front or back of the magazine. Pay scales vary. Also, search out the internet (Google is my preferred search engine) for short story ezines and be sure to read their submission guidelines carefully.

As for the original question: is the short story a dying genre? I’d like to think not, just a genre that needs some good resuscitation.