Welcome to Avery. We're new, so allow us tell to you a little about ourselves.
Avery is an anthology of fiction – fiction, because, in a world made meaningful by storytelling of all kinds, it's still what moves us most. We’re providing a space for readers and writers to find each other; a space for us to meet, to mingle, to communicate across boundaries. It’s a space where unspoken truths can begin to emerge.
But Avery also does something an anthology of fiction isn’t supposed to do: it publishes stories that haven't been published anywhere else. Our stories are here, now, to be read, now. They can’t wait for the approval of top-rung publishers or anthologizers. We—Avery's readers, writers, and contributors—are deciding what’s worthwhile, what’s necessary, what’s ours.
So what is worthwhile? What kind of stories do we read? Donald Barthelme once said the only criteria on which to judge a story is “Does it knock your socks off?” We like that, but we don’t think it’s entirely accurate. We like stories that knock our socks off, but we also like stories that slip our socks off gently, or rip our socks off unexpectedly, or tug and tug at our socks until they’re lying on the floor beside the bed. The important thing is that by the end of the story our feet are bare.
We plan to publish two anthologies per year. We hope Avery is a little bit different, of course, a little more of this or a little less of that. We hope that writers will find their way to us, so that readers can find their way to them.
