Late last year, Tyler Cabot, a former editor at Esquire, started a new concern called The Chronicles of Now. The setup is simple. From Cabot’s welcome email:
“We commission the world’s greatest authors to write short fiction inspired by the headlines. In doing so, we’re hoping to prompt readers to consider a single resonant news story—what it means, why it happened, and why it matters—with fresh eyes. We accompany each short story with a fact-checked explanation of the news that took place, along with a curated list of the best narrative journalism, podcasts, books, and films on the topic for those who want to dig deeper.”
Each new story is sent to readers on Saturday. Maybe this is not a way to escape from the news but it could be a way to comprehend it better. One of the participants is our own Ben Fountain. You can read his story, “Rules of Special Measures,” here. It certainly gets at a very specific mood that I think many of us can relate to.
And I would be neglecting my duty as D Magazine‘s fiction editor if I did not tell you that you can read another story by Fountain in our forthcoming July issue, which will feature the fourth installment of our ongoing microfiction series, wherein we commission the city’s greatest authors to write short fiction (200–900 words) inspired by Dallas. This is year is fun: we asked the writers to choose from a list of songs about Dallas or by Dallas musicians.
