Next Stop for The Story Prize Finalists: Storyville

Exciting news: Each of the three finalists for The Story Prize—Anthony Doerr, Yiyun Li, and Suzanne Rivecca—will have a story from their nominated collections appear on Storyville in the weeks ahead, leading up to the March 2 event at The New School in New York city. What is Storyville? It's an app for iPad or iPhone that each week delivers a short story directly to a subscriber's device. The stories come from published collections, and an author statement accompanies them. The app also interacts with Twitter and Facebook.

The creator and publisher of Storyville, Paul Vidich, is no stranger to this blog. He has twice contributed guest posts about digital distribution. Most importantly, he's a a short story writer and evangelist, who spent more than a year developing the idea for this app.

The $4.95 price for a six-month subscription to Storyville allows readers to sample a substantial number of story collections. In this case, I hope a taste of Doerr's Memory Wall, Li's Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, and Rivecca's Death Is Not an Option will lead readers to buy the books.

For our part, we're offering Storyville pairs of tickets to The Story Prize event to give away each week that one of these stories runs. That means a few subscribers will get to see the authors read from and discuss their work live on-stage, taking readers on a trip from the newest platform for stories to the oldest.