This and That

New feature accentuates what’s new and announces author’s new Chicago short story series: “Mine will be the first fiction ever published in the magazine.”

Welcome to “This and That.” I thought about titling the new monthly feature “Man About Town”, a common newspaper column title from decades gone by, denoting the columnist who rounds up facts and tidbits. Today’s world is instantaneously channeled into newsfeeds and today’s reader is savvier—if distracted, overwhelmed and bombarded—while the news span is both shallower and shorter.

In the four years since I introduced this small free press, I’ve made an effort to respect your time and capacity. I’ll round up what’s newsworthy and what’s new or pending in my circles. Perhaps like you, I’ve been busy since Christmastime. Fifty years after the debut of NBC’s Little House on the Prairie—150 years after his family joined an exodus from America’s East to go West—a few days after his birthday, my profile of frontiersman Charles Ingalls was published in Chicago. Autonomia celebrated a fourth anniversary on January 17, the date I launched with a review of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Today, I’m announcing the American debut of my terrorism-themed story, “Strapped,” on Chicago’s literary site co-founded by three U.S. war veterans who fought in Afghanistan. I’m also announcing a new series by yours truly marking a Chicago magazine’s first-ever publication of fiction. I’m thrilled to know that my writing’s re-shaping the free press—orienting the reader to read fiction. This news is that exciting.

“This and That” goes to the paid subscriber, who’s first to know—besides new and upcoming events, music, movies, people and books I anticipate—details of the deal: