🚨A LEAN Magazine Announcement🚨 LEAN is devoted to "non-protagonist-centered-writing" but this has always been a misnomer, not accurately reflecting the work published in the magazine, or the conceptual gist, and so a change is necessary: Less-protagonist-centered writing

🚨A LEAN Magazine Announcement🚨 LEAN is devoted to "non-protagonist-centered-writing" but this has always been a misnomer, not accurately reflecting the work published in the magazine, or the conceptual gist, and so a change is necessary: Less-protagonist-centered writing

LEAN is back again with issue #12! J S Khan takes us on a 19th century British ship whose lively passengers are contained byt a looming event @carlterver depicts real uncanny change in modern Nigeria tuned to "the slappiness of sound" www.lean-mag.com

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LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.

lean-mag.com

LEAN is back again with issue #12! J S Khan takes us on a 19th century British ship whose lively passengers are contained byt a looming event @carlterver depicts real uncanny change in modern Nigeria tuned to "the slappiness of sound" www.lean-mag.com

Home | LEAN magazine

LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.

lean-mag.com

Jill Biden charges around 50k for an event, Rachel Maddow closer to 100k...that's what ALA members are increasingly paying for... this celebrity-worship that has little-to-nothing to do with libraries which if you haven't heard are having a hard time out there...ALA is so profoundly out of touch!

Jill Biden charges around 50k for an event, Rachel Maddow closer to 100k...that's what ALA members are increasingly paying for... this celebrity-worship that has little-to-nothing to do with libraries which if you haven't heard are having a hard time out there...ALA is so profoundly out of touch!

None of ALA's featured speakers are librarians or connected to libraries in any meaningful way. It's all about booking celebrities, paying them huge honoraria and then passing that along to members in the form of obscene conference fees. What a racket!

Pleased to have a new story about life in a very odd small town in @leanmag.bsky.social the magazine for “non-protagonist-centered fiction”

LEAN magazine@leanmag.bsky.social · 6mo ago

We are officially LEANing into spring over here with issue #11! Matt Leibel's "Town" describes a sort of place that's bigger and smaller than the sum of its parts. Meanwhile Selen Ozturk's story "Aurora" is all about the push-and-pull between a story and its writer. www.lean-mag.com

We are officially LEANing into spring over here with issue #11! Matt Leibel's "Town" describes a sort of place that's bigger and smaller than the sum of its parts. Meanwhile Selen Ozturk's story "Aurora" is all about the push-and-pull between a story and its writer. www.lean-mag.com

Home | LEAN magazine

LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.

lean-mag.com

In the spirit of practicing what I preach here's a non-protagonist-centered short story about Vikings, Christianity and what happens when the present meets the past. clereviewofbooks.com/if-the-vikin...

If the Vikings - Cleveland Review of Books

None of them had wallets or cell-phones or any ID. Just Viking stuff.

clereviewofbooks.com

In the spirit of practicing what I preach here's a non-protagonist-centered short story about Vikings, Christianity and what happens when the present meets the past. clereviewofbooks.com/if-the-vikin...

If the Vikings - Cleveland Review of Books

None of them had wallets or cell-phones or any ID. Just Viking stuff.

clereviewofbooks.com

Here's an essay I wrote calling on lit mags to use their about pages to tell us about the kind of writing they publish. litmagnews.substack.com/p/what-are-o...

What Are Our Literary Magazines All About?

"What do our literary magazines seek to accomplish?"

litmagnews.substack.com

Here's an essay I wrote calling on lit mags to use their about pages to tell us about the kind of writing they publish. litmagnews.substack.com/p/what-are-o...

What Are Our Literary Magazines All About?

"What do our literary magazines seek to accomplish?"

litmagnews.substack.com

Check out my short story “Economy of Language” in @leanmag.bsky.social! This one was arduous to write, by which I mean that I had a great time. Very excited that it found a home in a magazine I admire so much www.lean-mag.com/economyoflan...

Sophie Drukman-Feldstein

Economy of Language

lean-mag.com

LEAN magazine is here for the holidays with Issue #10 Sophie Drukman-Feldstein's "Economy of Language" depicts a world of exhaustible speech - you better watch what you say Meanwhile Owen Yingling's "Mene Mene" is a story of uncertain resurrection www.lean-mag.com

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LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.

lean-mag.com

LEAN Magazine is open for business! Please send along your work. LEAN has mostly focused on fiction but we're very interested in memoir, especially the kind that evokes the contexts and conditions of life, sidelining the individual for the sake of conveying useful information

Another translation published! Check out my translation of Diego Lama’s story “The Silent City” in LEAN. A big thanks to Semyon Khokhlov for featuring us!

Diego Lama

The Silent City

lean-mag.com

LEAN magazine is back at it with issue #9! Diego Lama's "The Silent City," translated by Rose Facchini, portrays a besieged city expanding toward the infinite. Stephen Mortland's amazing story "Three Sofias" is all about promiscuous acts of attention. www.lean-mag.com

Home | LEAN magazine

LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.

lean-mag.com

LEAN magazine is back at it with issue #9! Diego Lama's "The Silent City," translated by Rose Facchini, portrays a besieged city expanding toward the infinite. Stephen Mortland's amazing story "Three Sofias" is all about promiscuous acts of attention. www.lean-mag.com

Home | LEAN magazine

LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.

lean-mag.com

The new LEAN Magazine - Issue 8 - is here! Featuring Jon Conley's story of a hot day at the beach where the people aren't quite right. And a story by Jon Doughboy that stirs up a heteroglossic stew on a very clear night in Idaho. www.lean-mag.com

The new LEAN Magazine - Issue 8 - is here! Featuring Jon Conley's story of a hot day at the beach where the people aren't quite right. And a story by Jon Doughboy that stirs up a heteroglossic stew on a very clear night in Idaho. www.lean-mag.com

Very excited to share this essay about the great German author Alexander Kluge whose unusual work is all about common human feelings and "happy endings that don't lie." www.full-stop.net/2025/03/06/f...

The Human Situation in the Work of Alexander Kluge

All of Kluge’s books contribute to one large, ongoing project to build up a toolkit of resistant feelings that readers can use to plot their own ways out.

full-stop.net

Very excited to share this essay about the great German author Alexander Kluge whose unusual work is all about common human feelings and "happy endings that don't lie." www.full-stop.net/2025/03/06/f...

The Human Situation in the Work of Alexander Kluge

All of Kluge’s books contribute to one large, ongoing project to build up a toolkit of resistant feelings that readers can use to plot their own ways out.

full-stop.net

"It's really not so easy to find sentences that explain who you are. But maybe it's not so important, either." ---Jenny Erpenbeck

There's nothing essential about narrative modes and that's especially true when it comes to their relation to protagonism. 3rd person can be used to center an individual just as 1st person can be used to sideline them.

There's nothing essential about narrative modes and that's especially true when it comes to their relation to protagonism. 3rd person can be used to center an individual just as 1st person can be used to sideline them.

Self-centered protagonism is a problem that demands formal solutions. It's not enough for a character to be "self-aware" or even to look out beyond themselves because such looking can easily turn into self-affirmation.

Anyway, it's a really great work out recently from @spurleditions.bsky.social in a new translation by Dana Lupo

The narrative does not present this primarily as a problem for the hero but rather as a problem for other people, and that's precisely because this novel does not subscribe to the modern dogma of protagonist supremacy

The utopian novel The Known Southern Land (1676) is the kind of early work that can help us understand the blind spots of the modern novel's insistence on the supremacy of the protagonist...