Not The Same Ol' Story

It doesn't take an M.F.A. to figure out the content of a literary journal named One Story. Subscribers get--that's right!--one story mailed to them every three weeks. It's a paperback work of fiction that's 20-odd pages long, which allows you to say that you subscribe to a lit journal--and that you read it too. About 1,000 people can make this claim so far, with 30 to 50 eager readers signing on each week. Not bad for a tiny publication in a business with a whopping failure rate. "For all of our start-up costs, it's now pretty much holding its own," says One Story publisher Maribeth Batcha. "Our readers have said they tear the envelope open and read it like it's a letter from a friend." Subscribers to quarterlies have traditionally anticipated the next installment the way you do an AmEx bill. "Most lit magazines are like castor oil," says Rob Spillman, of three-year-old Tin House. "They're bland and supposed to be good for you." But it may be that there's expanded support for pubs that spice it up. Journals tied to universities, independent publishers say, lack a strong editorial vision because the grad-student staffs are ever evolving. Efforts such as Tin House and Dave Eggers's McSweeney's have powerful authorial sensibilities. The material is more voice-driven and quirkier. Tin House ran a creative nonfiction piece imagining the final days of one of Dr. Jack Kevorkian's last patients; the author interviewed people who knew the patient to get background information. It's this creative freedom that draws writers. "Commercial publishing has its eye on the market," says Wendy Lesser, editor of The Threepenny Review. "It can't afford to take risks. People that care about reading and writing are forced to flee to these little places." And there's a welcoming community to provide shelter.