READ YOUR WAY TO CHRISTMAS WITH ADVENT CALENDAR OF SHORT STORIES
Perhaps this goes without saying, but the 2017 Short Story Advent Calendar is a physical object. More than two dozen of them once you pull off the vellum case and unwrap each individually packaged softcover book. One does this every day of December through Christmas, hence Advent Calendar and the daily ritual that it suggests.
But getting back to the “objectness” of the anthology, this third collection is a particularly lovely looking one, sharply designed by Natalie Olsen in collaboration with the curator of its authors and words, Edmonton’s Michael Hingston.
“When you look at a beautiful object,” the 31-year-old author notes, “you don’t have to explain its value. People just coo over it. We know books have this beautiful esthetic. We just wanted to double down on that.”
He speaks of the graphic novels of Chris Ware and the McSweeney’s books as inspirational high watermarks.
But how Hingston, an author and periodical writer, became a book publisher is one of those classic “Whoopsie!” Edmonton creativity stories. Basically, he was shopping for something that didn’t yet exist.
The story begins in 2014: “People were starting to make these deluxe advent calendars for adults — whiskey, perfume. It worked for areas where you wanted to try out a lot of different things.
“As a fan of books and book design, I thought should go buy the literary version of that. And then there wasn’t one.
“And then,” he laughs, “I immediately forgot about it.”
The following summer, 2015, he remembered a light-bulb flash, and contacted Natalie Olsen, who’d designed his first novel, The Dilettantes. “We started the next day on it,” Hingston says.
Impressively, they put together the 2015 Short Story Advent Calendar in time for Christmas and, in the effort, birthed a publishing company. So far, they’ve made three annual advent calendar anthologies and The Ghost Box — same idea, but timeless and scary, its design involving magnets and red foil. It’s equally gorgeous.
In the Short Story Advent Calendar, the stories run from eight pages up to 32 — around 3,000 to 8000 words. This article is about 900 words, to give you an idea.
“You get a story each day. You pop the seal and you don’t know what story you’re getting until the day you’re opening it. The idea is these take half an hour, an hour to read. I don’t want people to worry about falling behind.”
The stories aren’t themed, though Hingston puts his favourite one on Dec. 23, a small consolation for his too-close-to-Christmas birthday. None were written by him.
I honestly can’t tell you if the stories are as good as the last two editions, because one of the clever twists of the thing is this would be considered cheating, like opening a present under the tree early or wearing X-ray specs to the sock hop.
Part of the joy inherently includes finding out who the author is of any particular tale that day and that day only.
But, tactically, Hingston reveals a few. “This year we have Kelly Link, a really great literary/sci-fi writer. Jim Gavin, a guy from California — he has a show coming out on AMC (Lodge 49). Maggie Shipstead is an excellent novelist and short story writer from the States. We have something from Ken Liu — he does short-story writing, but he’s also well-known as a translator.” Liu, in fact, translated Cixin Liu’s stunning The Three-Body Problem — the only translated book to win a Hugo.
“And,” Hingston adds, “Carmen Maria Machado. I feel proud to have found her, because her story collection came out earlier this year, and after we’d signed her on, it was shortlisted for the National Book Awards in the States. And we got a formally inventive story from her.”
Moving away from the local flavour of the first collection, these stories were written by authors across North America and, as of this year, Europe. “A key criteria is they haven’t appeared in a book. I want this to be new, even for fans of that writer. Stuff that’s a little harder to find, maybe cut from the collection at the last minute — or was maybe too weird to end up anywhere else.
“I like the stranger corners of fiction, particularly in short fiction. Even if you don’t like it, the next day there’s something new. It’s an odd grab bag, but really appealing.”
Hingston hopes the recognizable authors lead readers to both inventive styles and voices they haven’t heard before.
Because the internet was sitting there all ignored and sulking in the corner, readers are encouraged to discuss their day’s haul with the hashtag #ssac2017 on social media.
“It forms this little community where anyone who wants to can chat about what they’re reading with anyone else who has the books.”
The last two years, printing first 1,000, then 2,500 copies, the collections have sold out — I know this tragedy first-hand. This year, there are just over 3,000 available at stores around town and online at H&O.
“We’re not a traditional publisher,” says Hingston. “We don’t have warehouse space. We just want to get them out to the readers as quickly as possible. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. People have doubted that in the past.”
The ongoing project’s cleverness comes down to a certain philosophy. “Now that we don’t need books to learn — people aren’t buying encyclopedias anymore — publishers have to zero in on what can the book do that other mediums can’t do.
“Natalie and I are just two people working off the sides of our desks. If we’re not making something beautiful, why are we even doing this?”