Receiving a postcard is always a cool surprise. It’s always interesting to receive a small piece of a faraway location accompanied by a story. Unfortunately, up until now the only real way to receive a postcard is to know someone that happens to be visiting that place.

Enter Postcrossing, the new project that allows you to receive postcards from random locations worldwide. All you have to do is register with Postcrossing and start mailing postcards to the addresses they provide you with in order to start receiving cards from random locations. So why not sign up and start swapping your story with new friends from all over the world? (more…)

Three minutes, 20+ six-word memoirs. A torrent of self-expression from writers famous and obscure at The Rumpus & Tin House benefit at NYC’s glorious Highline Ballroom on November 17, 2009.

Six-Word Memoirists: Highline Ballroom, Nov. 17 2009 from SMITHmag on Vimeo.

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“In the end, it’s all these crazy stories that made me who I am today.”

Growing up, Oran Canfield’s life couldn’t have been further from the average person’s childhood experience. The son of Chicken Soup for the Soul author and self-help guru Jack Canfield, Oran spent his early years honing his juggling skills among circus people, attending punk rock shows, and just basically spending time with every possible unusual subset of fringe culture.

As an adult, Oran relocated to San Francisco, where he played drums in a number of art rock bands, opened a successful recording studio, and developed a drug addiction that nearly killed him. In his debut memoir, Long Past Stopping, Oran chronicles his long and often frustrating road to recovery with unexpected humor as he unpacks the numerous bizarre stories he collected along the way. (more…)

See the show, be the show. A few dozen Six-Word Memoirists are part of an amazing show this Tuesday, November 17 at the Highline Ballroom in New York City. We’re joining the one and only Rick Moody, master storyteller and now HBO sensation Jonathan Ames (illustrated here by Nick Bertozzi), This American Life’s Starlee Kine, Get Your War On author David Rees, comedians Todd Barry and Eugene Mirman, HBO Def Poetry Jam star Vanessa Hidary, and the band Care Bears On Fire. The evening is presented by The Rumpus and Tin House, in affiliation with Shine Global and SMITH. We’re calling the event “More Than You Expected,” and if you were at similar event we did with The Rumpus this past spring, you know you can expect an awesome amount of talent in one very fun, very fast evening, for just $10.

Doors open at 6. Show starts promptly at 7. We’re kicked out of the Highline by 10.
The Highline Ballroom
431 W. 16th St., NYC
Buy tickets here.
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Last week we made our biggest appearance for I Can’t Keep My Own Secrets: Six-Word Memoirs by Teens Famous and Obscure at the –ZOMG!– New York Public Library! And, yes, it’s the one with the famous lions (named Patience and Fortitude) guarding the front steps. We’ve been in awe of the beautiful main branch library on 42nd St and 5th Ave for longer than most SMITHteeners have been alive, so we were extremely honored to appear there.

But the teen contributors far outshone Patience and Fortitude with their Honesty and Courage as they joined us on stage to tell stories behind their sixes. We heard of friendships broken, siblings resented, and operations survived. The poise and eloquence on display was astonishing, as young men and women as young as 13 and as old as 19 talked about their secrets with an auditorium of rapt teens, parents, book industry pros, YA novelists, and one very precocious six-year-old.

When we opened the slam up to the room, we heard former teenagers look back on adolescence with memoirs like “Spent every spare moment making out” and “Oh jeez, Mom, shut the door!” A certain 60-something admitted he often forgot he wasn’t still a teen and shared his reassuring six, “Doctor says it happens to everyone.” So whether you arrived at this post via SMITHteens or AARP, feel free to comment with a six-word middle-school memoir of your very own…
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A perfect example of a blog that’s brilliant in it’s simplicity, OMG I’M THE ADULT is currently looking for submissions of your story about the moment you realized that you weren’t a kid anymore.

Whether it happened when you started your first post-college job, bought your first home, or simply the first time somebody called you “Sir,” the moment you suddenly notice that your all grown up is a huge milestone in anyone’s life. So, why not go ahead and share your story with the rest of us? And let’s not get too down on the idea of growing old. Because honestly, I’m a firm believer that being an adult is way more fun than being a teenager if you do it right. There is evidence to support this theory. (more…)

“Writing the book was like an archaeological dig; I had to put together shards of our lives into a cohesive whole that made sense to the outside world.”

Back in July, we interviewed Philip Smith about his new memoir, Walking Through Walls, which explores his late father’s fantastic life and work as a faith healer.  Now it’s out in paperback, so we checked in with him to find out how he feels about publishing his story and how people (and spirits) are reacting. (more…)

SMITH’s community of storytellers rose to our latest challenge in the style and spirit we’ve come to expect, submitting more than 430 entries from as close as across the hall to as far as at least India
for “Six Words on a Significant Object”. The contest was a collaboration with Significant Objects, the brainchild of Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker. Their contention is one we can get behind: objects with stories attached to them increase in value. The pair have recruited writers like William Gibson, Nicholson Baker, and Curtis Sittenfeld to craft significance for flotsam purchased on the cheap at thrift stores, then selling story and object as a pair on eBay (Gibson’s story of an ashtray catapulted its value to $101 from $2.99). eBay is where the object you see above and this winning story are now headed: “You lose,” she puffed. True. Again.”

The scribe is Rob Agredo, who tells us he is a “reluctant dolly grip, living in the Bronx with his beautiful wife, twin three-year-old girls, and little dog Zuzu.” Rob receives all the loot from an online auction of that lighter/pool ball and his tale about it. Make a bid yourself or follow the money on eBay. Hemingway would surely approve.

It wasn’t easy to arrive at one winner—scroll through the entries, they’re awesome—so we also wanted to mention five more of our favorites and their authors.

“After pool table sex, smoked cigarettes.”
- Kelly Kreth

“He smoked me, I just smoked.”
- Cameron Vest, Reston, Virginia

“Old flame. Great rack. Plays game.”
Paul de Denus, Santa Rosa Beach, Fl

“Fire ball…….colliding………Earth………remain ca…”
Kritika Kushwaha, New Delhi, India

“Never needed those eyebrows. Your rack?”
Pete Sosalski
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