Does publishing short stories matter any more?
For literary and upmarket authors, the ‘traditional’ trajectory to getting an agent used to be:
Get an MFA
Write and publish short stories in “prestigious” magazines
Get approached by an agent based on those short stories or use those publications as bio credentials when querying a collection or novel
Is this still happening?
I still reach out to writers after reading a very good short story online or in print. I’ve been connected to several extremely talented writers on my list this way. Sometimes the author’s longer project isn’t exactly what the agent’s looking for, or they never write a full book, or they sign with someone else. But reading short stories to scout for great writers is still something many agents, myself included, do in addition to reading queries.
But after a few recent MFA visits, Ross Barkan’s substack on short stories, and
’s question about how agents are using substack in light of The New Yorker’s "Is the Next Great American Novel Being Published on Substack?" about ’s Substack-published novella, I started reflecting on how I thought about short stories and their published platform in this new era. And I do agree that this is a new era.