A generation. 20 years of the best online writings from the ever-changing American South.
I want to say that the autumn of 2001 — when the first issue of storySouth came out — was very different from 2021, but in many ways it wasn’t. Back then we were dealing with an international crisis in the aftermath of 9/11, a crisis that ended up reshaping our world. Today we’re dealing with an international crisis in the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that will likely reshape our world.
And in 2001 there were political, racial and cultural tensions as the United States, and the American Southern in particular, struggled toward meaningful change. You can still write the same words in 2021.
And in both 2001 and 2021, there were and are people with a desire to start their own online literary journals and magazines.
In 2001 that would be myself and Jake Adam York. Jake and I met while college students at Auburn University, where we worked together on the Auburn Circle, the university’s literary and art magazine. Jake eventually became one of the magazine’s editors, a position he held until we published a special issue focused on the stories of LGBTQ+ people on campus at a time and place when that was not done. The university administration, the student government, and many alumni were outraged and threatened to shut down the magazine, so Jake and most of the staff resigned in protest.
At some point after that we got together and, still angry over what had happened, decided we’d start our own magazine if we ever had the chance. A magazine where no one in power could tell us what we could or could not publish.
If those sound like the soon-to-be-forgotten words of college students who hadn’t yet entered the real world, perhaps they were. But when 2001 rolled around and I wanted to start an online literary journal to help change the perceptions of what Southern literature could be, Jake was the first person I contacted. He instantly agreed.
One major difference between then and now is that today the online and digital publication of magazines and literary journals are not only widely accepted, they are in many ways the standard. But when Jake and I founded storySouth, online publishing was actively looked down upon. As a result one of our goals was not only to publish the best literary magazine we could, it was to also change how people viewed online publishing.
That turned out to be far easier said than done.
I still remember the time when the editor of a prestigious “year’s best” anthology responded to my request to consider stories from storySouth. This editor said that while storySouth published some very good works, he couldn’t consider anything from our virtual pages since we weren’t a real publication.
Sadly, storySouth wasn’t the only online publication facing such hostile opinions. A number of other online magazines and journals had launched in the years before and after storySouth, including such publications as Eclectica Magazine (launched in 1996, one of the internet’s first online journals), Strange Horizons (launched in 2000), Blackbird (launched in 2002), and Narrative Magazine (launched in 2003). All of these publications along with many others were deliberately overlooked for awards while the stories, poems, and essays they published were almost never reprinted in the anthologies and collections of the year’s best writings.
To help bring more attention to these deserving publications and the authors they published, in 2003 I launched the storySouth Million Writers Award. The award ran for more than a dozen years and recognized an amazing roster of authors, many of whom have gone on to reshape the literary world.
Today, e-publishing no longer needs to attempt to be taken seriously. Instead, digital and online publications are at the heart of any discussion of today’s publishing world. And just like 20 years ago, people determined to leave their mark on different literary genres are still creating online journals and magazines, with FIYAH: A Magazine of Speculative Black Fiction, Air/Light and khōréō being only a few of the wonderful examples of new and exciting online journals that have emerged in recent years.
Eventually both Jake and myself moved on from storySouth, with Jake focusing on his poetry and teaching while I turned to my own fiction writing. Terry Kennedy and the amazing people at Spring Garden Press took over the magazine, which has continued to play an essential role in the country’s literary magazine landscape.
I wish Jake had lived to see storySouth reach its 20th anniversary. But I’m certain he would have loved how storySouth and the other online literary magazines and journals from the internet’s early days helped change the publishing world for the better.
