Dear readers,
A heads-up that the brilliant Annie Correal (@anniecorreal) invited me to join Cowbird a few days ago, and I’m having tons of fun with it. I’ve posted three stories thus far. Cowbird is a (gorgeously designed) social network for storytelling. It’s actually doing something I had planned for this very space (see here)…even if cultural criticism later won its way back into my heart.
I’ll probably cross-post or re-write some of those stories on Cowbird, as I did with the (oddly relevant) story of talking about Buddhism with a park ranger in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Cowbird gives me a chance to write very compact true stories, free of the anxiety that American culture often produces in me. It’s also a chance to show my roots a little more: so far, two of my three stories have been family heirlooms.
The New York Times, incidentally, is all about it. Of course not every story is good, and there is a slight bias towards “sad kid with a big camera” emo stuff…but the overall quality of the writing is remarkable. The site is meant to inspire purposeful writing, and it does.
My Cowbird page is here.
-Kugelmass
PS. If you read the Times article — yeah, I know. I also wish Harris hadn’t said that thing about “soul food.” Resist the sound bite, Harris! Resist!
This is … !
I don’t have an appropriate superlative to capture how valuable this kind of forum seems, especially in the way today’s iterations of social media have unfolded.
A hundred earnest thanks for posting this.
My pleasure, Matt! In addition to my new story, “The Secret of Success,” I can’t recommend enough Annie Correal’s lovely narrative about her encounter with Donovan’s ghost; make sure to listen to the audio. The story is called “Sunshine Superman.”