SMITH Team News

Last Week to Enter: First Person Impressions

August 11th, 2008 by Rachel

First Person Impressions is a national competition for documentary and memoir writers, photographers, and videographers. It’s about real people sharing their real life experiences and stories in their own way. Don’t miss your chance to win cash prizes, acclaim, and unique publishing opportunities. More info here: Read more »

New Webcomic: “My Name Is Emily and I’m a Recovering Artist.”

July 13th, 2008 by Rachel

ch01_01.jpgEmily is 39, single, underemployed, and can’t decide if she’s a dilettante or a genius. We’re pretty sure it’s the latter. Her fearlessly blunt diary of her “gap years” exposes a unique worldview on art, commitment, Nazis, mice, copy-machine salesmen, Judaism, SUVs, and psychoanalysis. Plus, it has funny pictures.
Read more »

New to SMITH? Welcome

April 1st, 2008 by Larry Smith

We’re a storytelling community: a place to read, write, and share stories. First time? Read on. Read more »

The Pregnancy Pickle Contest

March 28th, 2008 by Larry Smith

Have you ever dreamed of your beautiful, pregnant belly featured on a jar of mouth-watering pickles? Us, too. Read more »

SHOOTING WAR: The Miniseries

March 14th, 2008 by Larry Smith

dan-goldman-shooting-war-uk-poster.jpgWhen I first read Anthony Lappé’s treatment for Shooting War, I knew immediately that I wanted to publish his story somehow, some way on SMITH. We had never done anything like it—it was fiction for starters, and SMITH typically sticks to nonfiction stories with a focus on personal narrative. Still, the story was too good, the ideas behind it too smart, the whole sensibility too current to pass up. Read more »

Our Technical Difficulties

February 11th, 2008 by Tim Barkow

As some of you may be aware, SMITH has been behaving a little erratically over the past few days. Well, we’re super sorry about that, and we believe that it should be smooth sailing from here.

We had to perform a high-wire act this weekend, changing servers, and it went about as smoothly as we could have hoped, but there were still a few hiccups here and there.

We still have some buttoning up and dusting to do this week, but we’re hoping to be on a much more stable foundation now.

Many thanks go out to the guys at WiredTree, our new Web host, for answering my many questions this weekend. I know I wanted to be doing something else, and I’m sure they did too.

Brevity is the Soul of It

February 6th, 2008 by Larry Smith

your-life-in-six-bons-mots.jpgWe are so grateful for the incredible response—worldwide at this point—to SMITH Mag’s just released book, Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure. Some 832 six-word memoirists, most of whom have never been published anywhere before, have shared the most intimate details of their lives with perfect strangers, and done so with humor, creativity, and candor—in just six words. This little book, which costs less than the next bottle of wine you’ll pick up on your way to a party, is a manifestation of everything we believe about storytelling: populist, accessible, fun, profound, and addictive. That was our short, sweet message in a recent piece co-editor Rachel Fershleiser and I wrote about the power of six words on the op-ed pages of The LA Times. Read more »

The New New SMITH

February 1st, 2008 by Tim Barkow

Welcome to our relaunched and reloaded site. There are lots of way to contribute in areas we call story projects. Write and share a six-word memoir, a brush with fame, or answer our (almost) weekly question, The PopuList. If you’re curious, you can read more about our new look, or our thoughts one week later. And the top story around here? It’s a story of six. Our new book, Not Quite What I Was Planning, goes on sale next week, February 5th! There is arguably no better gift for under $12 to bring to a party, or send to that cousin you just don’t really understand. As SMITH member Michael Finkel once said: “It’s a hard book not to love.”

Head in the Clouds: SMITH One Week Later

January 29th, 2008 by Larry Smith

We’re a week into the wildest redesign in SMITH’s two-year history. Watching members join the community and make profiles while the submissions roll in has been one of the most exhilarating experiences in my whole silly career. In the same breath, as the February 5 release date of our six-word memoir book approaches, we’ve been blown away by kudos from spots as varied as the NY Post (”the brilliance is in the brevity”) to ReadyMade (”the petite self-portraits encompass love and love, joy and sorrow–everything you’d expect from a longer book”). And it seems the six-word signs keep coming from above, appearing in the form of pigs six-pigs.jpg and six-word therapy. Admittedly, it’s a little hard to keep on top of it all: a week after relaunch, Rachel’s battling the flu, Tim can barely make out his own code, and I see dead people. What we are, above all, is lucky: we get to experience, from the ground up, the birth of a storytelling community. All of us. To borrow a word from novelist and six-word memoirist Nick Flynn, “Many hands have kept us afloat.” And to paraphrase God and Stephen J. Dubner, on the seventh day we certainly don’t rest. After all, we’ve got a lot of work to do, and so do you. So, what’s your story?

SMITH Magazine: Our New Look

January 21st, 2008 by Larry Smith

Welcome to the new SMITH Magazine. It’s like the old SMITH, only much, much better.

smith-jan-15-2008.jpgIf the site looks different, that’s because it is. We’ve undergone the biggest redesign of SMITH since we launched just over two years ago, on January 6, 2006, which happens to be National Smith Day. We’re especially excited about the new features that move us one step closer to the site we’ve always wanted: a populist storytelling community. Read more »

 
SMITH Magazine

SMITH Magazine is a home for storytelling.
We believe everyone has a story, and everyone
should have a place to tell it.
We're the creators and home of the
Six-Word Memoir® project.