SMITH in the News

Recent press for SMITH Magazine’s Six-Word Memoir® project and bestselling book series.

Los Angeles Times:: “Smith Magazine’s six-word memoirs have been lodged in the literary firmament since the 2008 release of “Not Quite What I Was Planning,” a pocket-sized collection that became a bestseller.”

Entertainment Weekly:: “The book includes pensive memoirs by the likes of Molly Ringwald (“Acting is not all I am”) and clever pieces by the likes of James Frey (“So would you believe me anyway?””

KQED’s Forum with Michael Krasney: Larry and Rachel talk for an hour with SF’s legendary radio host, and take listener Six-Word Memoirs. There were so many people trying to call that the phone system brokedown! Listen to a podcast.

WNYC: Larry and Rachel talk Six-Word Resolutions on WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show.

Powells.com: Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser take a look back through the amazing Six-Word journey, from Hemingway to SMITH to speed dating to six-word prayers. It’s all true.

Shutterfly’s Heather Maddan interviews Larry Smith on Shutterfly’s new Storytelling section.

View complete press coverage for the book, including stories from NPR, The New Yorker,Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times on the six-word press page.


Recent Press for SMITH Magazine


NPR’s All Things Considered: A segment on SMITH and The National Constitution Center’s Six Words to Inspire a Nation project.

WHYY: Alex Schmidt interviews Larry Smith about SMITH and The National Constitution Center’s Six Words to Inspire a Nation project.

NY Post, Page 6:
• Page 6 reports on SMITH Magazine’s posthumously publishing some of Frank McCourt’s last written words.

• Our book, ix-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak, gets a nice, big box in Page Six, which calls it “love and lust in a nutshell.” Earlier in the year, Page Six picks up SMITH’s Iraqi Slideshow photo essay, which is then mentioned on The Colbert Report. Larry Smith breaks down the chain of events here.

The Washington Post’s Express: A feature story from free paper of the Washington Post on the success of the Six-Word Memoir book and the founding and future of SMITH Magazine.

The Publishing Spot says, “SMITH Magazine has built a lean, mean literary magazine on the web.”

Dave Eggers, at a Writing the Memoir workshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan, calls SMITH, “essential memoir reading.”

USA Today wonders if our Geek T-shirt photo essay is “the start of a long-overdue documentation of geek T-shirt couture.”

Recent Interviews With Founder & Editor Larry Smith


The Happiness Project: Happiness Project creator, Gretchen Rubin, interviews Larry Smith about the “dangerously addictive” Six-Word Memoir project.

A Storied Career: Kathy Hansen interviews Larry Smith, who she describes as, “a luminary in the story world, thanks to his innovative SMITH Magazine.”

The Sound of Young America (blog): Chris Bowman interviews Larry Smith Smith about the origins of SMITH Magazine, community, and how a few words can lead to many.

True/Slant: Nick Obourn interviews Larry Smith on social media, the Six-Word Memoir, and the state of publishing.

The Gothamist: “Larry Smith has parlayed his extensive magazine experience (Yahoo! Internet Life, P.O.V., ESPN, Might) to create the online magazine that’s not only named after him, it represents his vision for the future of populist storytelling: SMITH.”

The Personality Project: Larry Smith was asked to contribute to The Personality Project, a group blog that explore why personality matters by “inviting 100 top minds from business, best selling authors, popular artists, recognized academics, and global brand builders to talk about the role personality has had in their success.” Smith’s word to describe why storytelling means to much to him personally and what he’s trying to do with SMITH Mag: infectious.

StyleStation: “Traversing through the tangled web of media giants, Editor+Publisher & Entrepreneur Larry Smith added a page or two to his own story.”

The New York Times: “Larry Smith knows he is treading a fine marital line. Mr. Smith, 37, is the editor of Smith, an online magazine he founded, and he loves to work in bed at all hours—midafternoon, 2 a.m. if insomnia strikes, then again in the morning.”

American Public Media’s national Weekend America program does a segment on how and why SMITH’s six-word memoir contest became an online sensation.

The Penn Gazette: “In some ways [SMITH] resembles a gigantic cocktail party to which everyone is invited to come, listen, and contribute their own personal stories,” writes Susan Frith in Web, Take Two, a story on University of Pennsylvania alumni involved in Web 2.0 businesses, including SMITH’s Larry Smith, Tim Barkow, Rachel Fershleiser, and Alex Koppelman.

Praise for the Webcomic A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge.


Vanity Fair: “A profoundly human picture of the courage of six Katrina survivors.”


Wired.com: “A sterling example of comics with a social conscience.”


Rolling Stone: “Stunning.”


USA Today’s PopCandy: “Accessible, informative and beautifully drawn.”


Boing Boing: “An excellent way to present the personal stories of people affected by the natural disaster.”


Heeb Magazine: “Sets the bar high for the genre of Katrina writings.”

Stories About Smith’s Webcomic Sensation, Shooting War


For a longer list of coverage, see the Shooting War press page.
Check out Shooting War: The Book, published in fall, 2007.

Advertising Age:
“The burgeoning online comics world produced a bona fide sensation recently with Shooting War, a graphic serial with a most topical, if uneasy, storyline: the war in Iraq and the war on terror.”

New York magazine’s esteemed Approval Matrix declares Shooting War:
“Brilliant & Lowbrow”

Rolling Stone: “[A] scary-smart take on what the horrors of the future may hold.”

Village Voice:
“[T]he light-handed but searing political satire of Shooting War is taking the Sunday comic strip places it could never have gone before.”

Publisher’s Weekly’s Calvin Reid:
“A biting satire on the Iraq war that began as a Web comic and was acquired for print during this year’s San Diego Comic-con.”

Gizmodo’s Brian Lam tells Time.com:
“There is this web comic called Shooting War; it got picked up in the Village Voice and it’s this really cool web comic about blogging in 2011 in Iraq. The war is still going on and the blogger does everything by video because it’s easier than typing. The fact of it is that the web comic shows the future of blogging as being more flowing, more conversational.”

USA Today’s Tech_Space’s Angela Gunn:
“If you’ve ever gotten in on something important at the very beginning, you understand what’s in store for you — and even seven chapters in, I think this is just the beginning for this project and this creative team. Expect greatness.”

Baltimore Sun:
“Shooting War is nothing less than a shot across the bow of the blog generation.”

Wired’s Bruce Sterling:
“One doesn’t often see genuinely left-wing radical comix with a sci-fi tinge.”

Entertainment Weekly’s Popwatch:
“The anger, the artistry, and the very local detail make this a must-read. What’s more, the comic’s ‘trailer’ opens up a completely new way to tell stories with still pictures. It’s an intense and bracing read, torn from the headlines of tomorrow.”

AlterNet:
“[A]n arresting web comic … [that] has already become a prescient commentary on the future of warring Iraqi factions, globalization and citizen journalism’s struggle against mainstream media.”

Village Voice:
“[T]he light-handed but searing political satire of Shooting War is taking the Sunday comic strip places it could never have gone before.”

Dan Gilmor of the Center for Citizen Media calls Shooting War:
“A brilliant example of what could become a Web staple: graphic novels translated to a medium that is almost perfect for the genre. [I]t’s addictive.”

Smith Magazine Launch, 1.06.07


Cool Hunting: Now there’s a mag that’s unabashedly harnessing the infinite pool of online writing talent into one monthly publication. Features, anecdotes, free-form stories, SMITH Magazine sits on the pulse of today’s cultural narrative.

We’re all Smiths (The News & Observer, NC):

… You just have to have a Smith-like story or an interest in reading about, well, the Smiths, the Johnsons, the Joneses, the Williamses and everyone else out there in America. “Everybody has a story, and everybody should have a place to tell that story,” said magazine founder Larry Smith. …

Attention All Smiths, Today’s Your Day (Iowa City Press-Citizen)

… It also honors another Smith — Jedediah Smith — who was born Jan. 6, 1798, and became a well-known explorer and mountain man in the American West, according to Larry Smith, founder and editor-in-chief of Smith magazine in New York. … “A lot of people don’t know about National Smith Day,” Larry Smith said. …

Salon.com: “Salon contributor Larry Smith has launched a new online “blog-a-zine” titled—appropriately enough—SMITH. Its most arresting feature so far is the gallery of 16 images of “Beautiful Pregnant Women.” The first batch of photos, taken by Jennifer Maya Luz Pliego, are super-arty and gorgeous.”

Spidey Senses Blog (Ted Rheingold): “The web works very well for them. Long interviews, personal stories (both long and short), photo collections are accompanied by daily blog-like entries. Each piece allows for comments which are meant to tease the reader into becoming a participant and ideally tease their own story out of them.”

 
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.