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Use our annual ranking of the top 50 fiction magazines to find the best home for your short story.

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By Kelly Nickell
Melissa Bank, F.X. Toole, Adam Haslett, David Shickler. These are just a few recent first-time authors whose success can be directly linked to landing a coveted few pages in a respected literary magazine.


And while each of these authors' success stories is awe-inspiring, the path that led them—and their work—to bookstore shelves isn't a new one, says Zoetrope: All-Story Editor in Chief Adrienne Brodeur.


"Fiction magazines have always—in addition to being artistic ends unto themselves—served to expose new talent," she says. "I imagine there are many more examples of writers whose work first appeared in magazines (Heidi Julavits, Junot Diaz, Nathan Englander, Tom Paine, Amy Bloom to list a few) and who then went on to land book deals, than previously unpublished writers who were found in a publisher's slush pile."

Case in point: ZYZZYVA Editor Howard Junker pulled "The Monkey Look," by the then-unpublished F.X. Toole, from his slush pile in the fall of 1998. Shortly after the story ran in the Spring 1999 edition, agent Nat Sobel contacted the author and later sold Toole's short story collection Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner. The book was published by HarperCollins last September.

"My sense of F.X. Toole is that he was very lucky and that very few new writers get catapulted to the kind of attention he's received," says Junker.

Very few, perhaps, but Toole certainly isn't alone. David Schickler, who made quite an impression on the literary world when his short "The Smoker" was published in The New Yorker's "First Fiction" issue in June 2000, ended up with a two book deal—one a collection of short stories and the other a novel—with Dial Books. (Look for Shickler's novel Kissing in Manhattan to hit bookstore shelves this month.)

And don't forget The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing author Melissa Bank—one of the most recognizable names associated with a Zoetrope career launch. (The book was published in June 1999—only one year after Bank's short story by the same title appeared in Zoetrope.) But Brodeur also points to Adam Haslett, whose short story "Notes to My Biographer" in the Fall 1999 edition caught the attention of Nan Talese, president and publisher of the Nan Talese imprint at Doubleday—Talese ultimately bought Haslett's first, and currently unfinished, collection of short stories.

So just who's mining these popular literary magazines for such breakout talent?

"I frequently get calls from agents asking if a writer I've published is represented," says Brodeur, "and I can think of several cases in which a book editor/publisher has pursued a writer based on a story he or she has read in Zoetrope: All-Story."

But Junker, who says he regularly tries to get more agents to subscribe to the triquarterly ZYZZYVA, says it may be the younger agents who are keeping a keener eye on such publications.

"It is true that Nat Sobel, the agent who found Toole's story, does scour a lot of lit mags. But I think he is unique," says Junker. "Usually, I think that sort of digging is done by young agents who are trying to assemble a stable. Mature agents seem too besieged to do much beyond fend off their own slush piles."

Despite all the success stories and the many agents, publishers and editors who may—or may not—be reading the pages of publications like ZZYZZYVA and Zoetrope: All-Story, Brodeur says it generally takes more than a one-time appearance to "launch" a publishing career. But such an introduction certainly doesn't hurt.

"I would say that any time a less-than-famous writer is published in a magazine like Zoetrope: All-Story, his/her career is propelled along a bit. Presumably new readers get a taste; anthologies ... can have a look; editors at other fiction magazines can pursue that writer, etc.," she says.

"It is rare that it all happens at once, and more typically many people and publications go into 'launching' someone's career."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kelly Nickell is an assistant editor with Writer's Digest. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above article courtesy of Writer's Digest, http://www.writersdigest.com/hotlist/index.htm