Welcome to the newly revived series, Editor’s Eye. This is a Fictionaut Blog series that aims to highlight noteworthy work that may have slipped through the cracks of Fictionaut’s automated list of recommendations. Every two weeks, a distinguished visiting editor (remaining anonymous until the post goes up) will scour the site for lost treasures and will select a handful of outstanding stories that passed by readers too quickly.

I’ve enjoyed spending a week in the flow of Fictionaut, spotting trends and tendencies I’ve never quite noticed while popping in and out of the site more sporadically. It’s interesting to see how conversational this space is — more about collaboration than competition. There’s a distinct culture to this community, reflected in the emergence of “local” forms that have emerged over time.

Recently:
   Monday Chat with Misti Rainwater-Lites

Anything but the usual, please. Twists in language or plot or attitude. A thin, sharp line between forms or toes dipping into several at once. Economy and understatement, brush strokes that imply so much more. These are the qualities that get me excited about a piece of writing.

Recently:
   Monday Chat with Danny Goodman
   Fictionaut Five: Molly Peacock
   Front Page: May
   Books at Fictionaut: Giraffes in Hiding

So, these are the pieces that worked a little magic, for whatever reason. Maybe they made me think, or ponder, laugh, feel sad, amused, intrigued. Whatever – they made me feel something.

Openings like these got my attention: “As kids,/we blew up a fish./ We shoved a bottle rocket into its respiring mouth and lit it.” (Blowing Up While Fading Out by Anthony Van Hart).

Tara L. Masih is editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays, and author of Where the Dog Star Never Glows: Stories.

Cooper Renner‘s Disbelief, a novella in prose and verse about Samuel Taylor Coleridge, has just been published by Ravenna Press. He edits poetry, interviews and reviews for elimae.com.

Robin Black‘s collection If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This (Random House, 2010) was a finalist in the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. She is at work on her first novel and will be the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bryn Mawr College in 2012. There was more good work than I could […]

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

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