On the Radio: 3 minute stories wanted

Meredith Resnick, on her blog Full Read, reports that National Public Radio will be offering a new feature in the coming months: Dime Stories.

The show will be hosted by novelist Amy Wallen and memoirist James Spring and seems to have strong roots on the west coast.

From their website:
The author Bernard Cooper proposes that shorter stories require "… an alertness to detail, a quickening of the senses, a focusing of the literary lens, so to speak, until one has magnified some small aspect of what it means to be human."

DimeStories are compelling narratives - some fictional, some factual - that measure just three-minutes long. They may be funny, tragic, or strange. We are open to being surprised, so rather than detail what they are, here is a list of what DimeStories are not: essays, commentary, poems, news articles, rants, or sermons. DimeStories do not exceed 600 words.

If you ever find yourself in the fine pueblo of San Diego, stop by The Grove bookstore on the first Friday of any month and be part of our DimeStories OPEN-MIC, where writers gather and drop their names in the bucket to read 3-minute pieces they've been working on. Also check out our showcase DimeStories LIVE reading series, with dates in San Diego, Los Angeles (at Skylight Books), New York, and more.

So, consider submitting your own three-minute story to the show. How many pages add up to 3 minutes? It depends on your own mix of dialogue and exposition - I say somewhere between 4-6 pages. What do you think?

Check it out here: Dime Stories.

Fun, fun, fun.