The Atlantic is Bringing Fiction Back

The Atlantic has a long  history of publishing high quality fiction dating all the way back to its launch in 1857. It wasn’t so long ago that it was The Atlantic, New Yorker and Harper’s that were the big three. But five years ago The Atlantic pulled fiction from its subscriber pages, only publishing short stories in a special newsstand issue each summer.

However, The Atlantic is bringing short fiction back to its normal subscriber issues starting this May:

I HAVE SOME GOOD news. Next month, The Atlantic will once again send fiction home to our subscribers, in a special supplement that will accompany our May issue. On the newsstand, the supplement will be bound into the May magazine….We think—we hope!—we are seeing renewed interest in the short story.

Fiction writers haven’t had a lot of good news in the magazine world recently with many longstanding magazines folding or gutting their staff and moving to a student-run online version like TriQuarterly. At the same time, it would not surprise me if fiction readership has increased with the web and other recent trends. The gap just seems to be being filled with other magazines. It is nice to see some of the big boys taking notice and adjusting course.