This year, Wigleaf is celebrating 10 years of Wigleaf Top 50. Chad Simpson, Selecting Editor of Wigleaf Top 50 2008, wondered in his introduction if he had already missed the golden age of online publishing since he had been late in discovering it in 2005. I remember feeling that I, too, had missed the party, since the world of online publishing seemed already fully realized. Luckily, we didn't miss out. We were right on time, revelers at the ball.

Scott Garson, in his first Foreword in 2008, he wrote, "If you're going to do what I've done here — shortlist stories for an annual — you've got to be open. You've got to realize how many ways there are to approach writing a very short story. You've got to acknowledge that each of the hundreds of things being done can be done well."

So much has changed, but this has been a constant. The myriad and remarkable ways of telling a very short story. And these audacious writers, some who have appeared in every year of Wigleaf Top 50, as well as a new generation of storytellers know this to be true. They know how to revel in fiction making.

Thank you to this year's Selecting Editor, Manuel Gonzales, author of the brilliant books THE MINATURE WIFE and THE REGIONAL OFFICE IS UNDER ATTACK! A special thanks to Associate Editors Michelle Dove, Tawnysha Greene, Sean Lovelace, Rion Amilcar Scott, and Readers Shome Dasgupta, Casey Hannan, Monet P. Thomas, Kara Vernor, Anne Weisgerber, and Sennah Yee. And to Scott Garson, for inviting us to this party. Happy Anniversary Wigleaf Top 50!

Marcelle Heath's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review Online, matchbook, Nanoism, Necessary Fiction, NOÖ, Northville Review, PANK, Snake Nation Review, Storychord, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. She is Managing Editor of VIDA Review, and tweets @marcellepdx.


To link to this directly: http://wigleaf.com/18top50foreword.htm







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