Sooner or later, readers were going to start realizing that our short attention spans and easy-boredom points us squarely in the direction of the short story, an oft-neglected format, mostly viewed as the less-marketable, less-read format compared to novels.  Lo and behold, the Wall Street Journal recently pointed to the growing audience and appreciation of the short story form. The WSJ piece notes the recent prize-winning story collections by Alice Munro and Elizabeth Strout, and delves into the technology that seems to deem short stories as ideal for their format; (the WSJ mentions smartphones delivering stories and mini-e-books via projects like Five Chapters and Delacorte Press–I’d add Chicago’s own CellStories and Featherproof’s Triple Quick fiction to that list).

Sez them: “With the growing popularity of e-readers and digital devices, traditional publishing models are being challenged in ways that may benefit short fiction.”

Personally, despite the short attention span flash fiction may be deepening in me, I’ve signed up for every decent short-story-via-smartphone project I can find. Anything’s better than succumbing to the Red Eye during a commute. Am I right?