Flavorwire

Vice and Tablet‘s monthly fiction

The number of big-name magazines that run fiction has dwindled steadily over the past few years. Esquire, Playboy, and others have all decided it’s no longer in their best interest to run a short story every issue. It’s too bad. But Vice and Tablet (you can argue they aren’t big names, but they’re more established than most in this roundup) are picking up the slack. Both magazines implemented a promise this year to run fiction each month, and the resulting stories have been wonderful. Joke all you want about how Vice began its series with Tao Lin, but they went on to run stories by William T. Vollmann and Stanislaw Lem. Tablet has featured Joshua Cohen and Aimee Bender, among others. Attention, other well-trafficked general-interest Web publications: we dare you to join in the fun.