The Word Cloud

I finally managed a cyber sit-down with the incredibly busy and productive T.D. (Tim) Johnston. Aside from being an educator, and an author, Tim is the founder and editor of Short Story America which was recently named by Writer’s Digest as one of the Top 50 Online Literary Magazines in the world.

But, as you will see from the interview, Short Story America is far more than a literary magazine. For starters, their first Anthology will be released this month, and they are publishing it under their own imprint.

There is a lot of great information in this interview about Short Story America, which is a fantastic free resource for teachers, students, readers, and writers - with an amazing free library of classic short stories as well as great work from contemporary writers from around the world.

They pay writers for submissions, but the rights are non-exclusive, so writers are free to publish their stories elsewhere afterwards, or themselves. They also publish select stories in their hardback anthology, and as audiobooks. All the details, and much more, are in the interview.

Can you tell us a little about Short Story America and about what gave you the idea?

I have taught short fiction throughout my life as an educator, teaching American Literature, World Literature and Creative Writing in college-preparatory schools. For years it has struck me that it is very hard to find good contemporary short stories, not because they are not being written, but because they are either unpublished or are published briefly by a review and then disappear, never to be read and appreciated by most of us. This is beyond unfortunate.

So I decided to leave the school world and start a publication which is devoted completely to the short story and its author. Short Story America is dedicated to advancing modern short stories, while also keeping hundreds of classic stories readily accessible online in a classy format, unlittered by nuisance advertisements swimming along the margins of the page. Short stories deserve to be read, and not just in the year and venue in which they were published.