“The shooting had started three hours ago, and we had no clear exit. In the back seat of our unarmored Ford F250 there was a translator and a Dyncorp medic. I pressed down between them as close to the floor as I could so that they would absorb the bullets.”

Each Monday, we’re featuring a story from our upcoming book, The Moment, coming out in January 2012 from Harper Perennial. What’s a “moment”? It’s a story, told in words, images, emails or even the occasional poem or tweet about something large or small, playful or profound, that changed a life.

The story below and image above is by Aaron Huey, a photojournalist for National Geographic, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, The Smithsonian, and The New York Times. It’s a moment about facing the worst—in his case an ambush by the Taliban, which is pretty much as bad as it gets—and figuring out what, or who, is the best part of your life for the first time. Thankfully, most of us won’t face what Aaron did, but everyone goes through gut checks. Read on for a very big moment. (more…)

Each Monday, we’re featuring a story from our upcoming book, The Moment, coming out in January 2012 from Harper Perennial. What’s a “moment”? It’s a story, told in words, images, emails or even the occasional poem or tweet (or sometimes a poetic series of tweets), about something large or small, playful or profound, that changed a life.

The image above and story below comes from Nadja Cada, a student in Ramona Pringle’s Visual Studies course in the New Media department at Ryerson University in Toronto. This second-year class encourages students to explore the nature of narrative in the digital, visual age, and experiment with multi-platform production and non-linear modes of storytelling. This “moment” feels especially relevant in time between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and given the topic of SMITH Mag’s May 18 Story Show.

“The Moment was our first assignment of the year, a way of getting to know each other as individuals, artists and storytellers,” says Pringle, who was recently featured in a New York Times story about how virtual connections in gaming culture are fueling real-life connections. “Students were first asked to write a moment and accompany it with an image for print (of any media) and then asked to create a time-based piece (video, animation, etc), based on their moment.” (more…)

“I was in the hospital for a year, wrapped up like a mummy from head to toe. They thought I was going to die.”

Arthur Suydam, an iconic comic and sci-fi artist for Marvel Comics, National Lampoon, Heavy Metal and most everywhere else interesting, edgy art is found, writes about the moment he began to draw. His illustration below tells that story as well.

When I was five years old, a group of kids and I were outside playing and got a hold of some fireworks that didn’t go off. We’d seen a lot of cartoons where you tie a string to the dynamite, and the coyote is running with the dynamite in his pocket and it blows up. (more…)

“It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve seen my mom and she says, “look what I got,” and shows me the tattoo on her tan shoulder.”

Summer Pierre, a contributor to our most recent Six-Word Memoir book (”Arty dad, rocker mom, crazy childhood.”) offers a lovely illustrated Moment about her unusual mother with an unusual tattoo. She was eight years old when this Moment occurred. Click on the image below to enlarge, and let this intimate Moment sink in.

Julian Voloj and his wife Lisa live in Sunnyside, Queens. This photo is the Moment they knew they would be together. Julian explains below.

The photo was taken in 2002 at San Marco Square in Venice. Lisa and I had met briefly before in New York. She was 26, hailed from the Midwest, and living in Brooklyn. I was 28, born in Germany to Colombian parents, and living in Brussels. She came to visit me in Europe for our first “real” date.

When we kissed for the first time, we both knew that this is it. Everyone thought we were crazy, but against all odds, everything worked out. A year later I moved to New York, we got married the following year, and today we are happy parents of two boys.

I took this photo with a self-timer.

When we initially put out a call for “Moments” to see if the concept would work as well as we hoped, we contacted a few of our favorite illustrators (a selection of the Moments that will end up in The Moment book will be illustrations, comics, or photographs). One such artist, Adriano Moraes, immediately replied by explaning, “My Moment involved a punch in the face and a knife. Between choosing accepting one or using the latter. I choose to leave.” He went on to explain: (more…)