There Are Other Authors Than Dan Brown and Fucking James Patterson

Introduction by Jack Moody

In a landscape of media saturation and the public’s dwindling ability to remain focused on a given task for longer than the span of time it takes to watch a Tik Tok video, the attention towards literature as a creative medium has largely been hoarded by an elite few authors who are either so firmly established that they could pen an unhinged manifesto written exclusively in Wingdings and it would rocket to the top of the New York Times Bestsellers List, or by those who check the appropriate boxes deemed to be profitable by the monopolized publishing giants. Graduates with an MFA are a plus, sticking to the formula taught uniformly by every creative writing college class is even better.

As a result, the far majority of avid readers are unlikely to have ever heard of the massive pool of talent budding from the independent literature movement, fed by grassroots, indie publishers and working-class writers, much of the time without any formal writing education. But it’s for those exact reasons that the indie community is experiencing a renaissance of boundary-pushing creativity. The writing is experimental, outside of the box, but most of all, untainted by predetermined requirements for commercial success. The writers birthed from this movement make their art for the sake of the creative act above all else. For this reason, some of the greatest living writers are people you have probably never heard of.

With this column, I intend to change that.

By Jack Moody

Installment #1: Quantum Diaper Punks, novella by Stuart Buck

Installment #2: Soul Collector by Duvay Knox

Installment #3: Vivid Greene by Jacob Ian DeCoursey

Installment #4: History of Present Complaint, by HLR (poetry)

Installment #5: The Recalcitrant Stuff of Life, by Sean McCallum

Installment #6: Play the Devil, by Scott Laudati

Installment #7: Willoughby, New York by Carson Pytell

Installment #8: What Happened? by Mark SaFranko

Installment #9: Small Moods, by Shane Kowalski