Month: January 2025

Friday Five: Q&A with ‘Short Story, Long’ founder Aaron Burch

‘ I often feel happiest and most fulfilled when I read a submission and fall in love with it …’

You might call Aaron Burch a serial literary magazine founder.

His journey into the litmag world began in 2001, when he founded Hobart. He spent over two decades editing that journal, and toward the end of his tenure there he co-founded HAD, an online journal focused on publishing microfiction. Soon after that, he founded Words & Sports Quarterly, a sports-oriented literary magazine that is currently on hiatus.

Two years ago this spring, he launched his latest literary project, Short Story, Long, as a place for longer fiction — stories in the 2,000- to 8,000-word range, although stories of 3,000 to 5,000 words hit the publication’s “sweet spot.” (Read more about the publication and submission guidelines.)

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What will you shed in the Year of the Snake?

I kicked the habit (kicked the habit, kicked the habit)
Shed my skin (shed my skin)
This is the new stuff (this is the new stuff)
I go dancing in (we can go dancing in)

– Peter Gabriel, “Sledgehammer“

Happy Lunar New Year, folks, and welcome to the Year of the Snake. It begins today, January 29, 2025.

While many of us in Western cultures have been taught to take a dim view of the slithery creature — thanks to the serpent’s role in the Old Testament story of the fall of humanity — but that is not the case in the Eastern hemisphere. In much of Asia, the snake is “celebrated and revered” as a symbol of transformational change, writes Kimmy Yam in this NBC News story about the Lunar New Year.

Continue reading “What will you shed in the Year of the Snake?”