I was asked to try to outsmart this crowd-sourced aesthetic awards system. And so no offense super-fave stories, but I thought of you as the enemy. That said, many of the stories I selected had already accumulated little blue stars, and I was glad to know there were others who had also read and appreciated the stories below.

Recently:
   Checking in with Letras Caseras
   Fictionaut Five: Pam Houston
   Monday Chat with J. Mykell Collinz

It is my sincere hope to continue the wonderful work of Marcus Speh over at Kaffe in Kathmandu. I know it won’t be the same but in keeping a tradition alive perhaps we can make it new.

Recently:
   Fictionaut Five: Pam Houston
   Monday Chat with J. Mykell Collinz

We have this whole massive industry these days where writers work extremely hard to articulate and share their writing process, we give craft talk after craft talk until we get so sick of our “process” that we never want to write another word, and while there is much to be learned this way, I also wonder what is lost because aspiring writers don’t have to enter that difficult water by themselves.

Recently:
   Monday Chat with J. Mykell Collinz
   Editor’s Eye: Meg Pokrass

Doreen and I were eventually married in June of 1965 and we’ve been married ever since. She died at home of cancer last May. This is part of a series of stories based on the facts of our life together which are still in progress.

Recently:
   Editor’s Eye: Meg Pokrass

Now, our first guest editor’s identity can be revealed: it is none less than our very own Meg Pokrass, author of Damn Sure Right, host of the Fictionaut Five interview series, and editor for Blip Magazine. Here are the stories that caught Meg’s Editor’s Eye over the last two weeks.

Recently:
   Fictionaut Joins Strike to Protest Internet Censorship Bills on January 18
   Fictionaut Five: Zoe Zolbrod

Fictionaut is joining Reddit, Wikipedia, Boing Boing, and many other sites in the strike to oppose the Internet censorship bills SOPA and PIPA. Tomorrow, January 18, the site will go dark from 8am to 8pm EST. Fictionaut is committed to creativity, freedom of expression, and a censorship-free Internet, and we hope that the blackout will help to draw attention to this fundementally flawed legislation.

I found myself writing a literary thriller, which meant that the novel was both character- and plot- driven. Perhaps accordingly, I simultaneously wrote, outlined, and researched. It was a push-pull: what I discovered while writing would sometimes push forward the outline, and the outline would sometimes pull the writing along.

Recently:
   Monday Chat with Gay Degani
   Front Page: January

I’ve loved movies all my life watching them on a black and white TV from the time I was very young. Philadelphia Story, It Happened One Night, Casablanca, Rebecca, these were the kinds of things I wanted to write. So I learned how to write from learning how to write scripts.

Recently:
   Front Page: January
   Fictionaut Five: Brad Listi
   Introducing Editor’s Eye

Susan Tepper’s From the Umberplatzen is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Michelle Elvy is now editor at Blue Fifth Review. Wilderness House Literary Review has published “What’s a Housecoat” by MaryAnne Kolton; David Ackley’s “See?”; and “2008, What I Wanted” by JP Reese.

Recently:
   Fictionaut Five: Brad Listi
   Introducing Editor’s Eye

I’m not entirely in love with technology. Social media, for example, can be wearying.

Recently:
   Introducing Editor’s Eye