IN JANUARY 2006, SMITH Magazine burst into cyberspace with a mission to celebrate storytelling in all its forms.

"Everyone has a story," founder Larry Smith says, "you just have to ask. We're not the only ones asking, but we're asking."

That fall, SMITH invited sparing scribes to write stories for its six-word memoir project.

More than 15,000 people responded, providing gems that were poetic "I'm enjoying even this downward dance."(Colum McCann); pathetic, "Girlfriend is pregnant, my husband said." (Shonna MacDonald); prophetic, "The s--t invariably hits the fan." (Ashleea Nielson); and playful, "Barrister, barista: What's the diff, Mom?" (Abigail Moorhouse).

In February 2008, Harper Perennial released a slick paperback featuring the editors' favorites. The book, coedited by Smith and Rachel Fershleiser, is called "Not Quite What I Was Planning," and it rocketed to the New York Times Bestsellers list.

Now SMITH is fielding offers for calendars and T-shirts. Curtis Sittenfeld, the author of "Prep" and a "Not Quite" contributor, taught the six-word story in her grad school class. The memoirs have even been used as eulogies.

"It has a life of its own," Smith says.

Smith got his start at the magazines POV and Might in San Francisco. After that, he was an editor at Men's Journal, ESPN The Magazine and Yahoo! Internet Life, where he first experienced the new Webocracy.

"Yahoo Internet Life in 2000, 2001 and 2002 was a really good perch to see the beginning of user-generated content," he says.

But it wasn't until 9/11 that the idea for SMITH really began to take shape.

"The way 9/11 was told, better than any other way, was through The New York Times' 'Portraits of Grief," he says, referring to the newspaper's memorials to victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"It just really moved me, and I thought, 'Let's start a reader-generated magazine that's driven by readers, curated by editors and celebrates personal storytelling."

Smith and Tim Barkow launched the site on Jan. 6, 2006, National Smith Day, the holiday that pays tribute to America's most popular last name.

"We started SMITH because I believe most people don't want to sit back passively and let the world go by," he says. "They want to be part of it, the narrative they're creating in this world. They want to document that narrative."

He used his own name as a title, but only after some angst.

"It's dedicated to my grandfather," he says. "It's the everyman, but I was kind of torn because, you know, it's my last name."

According to Smith, the site presents the "chicken's eye" view of the world.

"There's the bird and the chicken. The bird is looking down in a kind of macro way, like the Iraq war through the perspective of the president or a general. A chicken eye view is a chicken lying on his back and giving his perspective. It's the point of view of a soldier on the ground," he says.

So far, SMITH has hosted a variety of projects, soliciting stories about sex, stars and obsessions. "We're a barbecue not a cocktail party," he says of the magazine's populist ethos. There are serialized Web comics, such as "A.D.: After the Deluge," above survivors true experiences with Hurricane Katrina, and "Shooting War," which was picked up by Grand Central Publishing and turned into a 192-page hardcover graphic novel. There are also several long-form memoirs in progress, and many of the stories are raw, both editorially and emotionally.

"The intimacy and the way people really put themselves out there surprised me a little bit," Smith says. He points to six-word submissions like "Never should have bought that ring,"(Paul Bellows) and "Torrential tryst. Terrible twins. Tied tubes." (M. Brenner)

But, then again, it's all part of the zeitgeist. "It's what [PostSecret blog founder] Frank Warren called the 'intimacy revolution,'" Smith says.

In fact, Smith thinks all the Internet-bred honesty has made these first years of the millennium the most fertile time for storytelling yet.

"We're in this amazing time where the tools have never made it more accessible. The sheer number of people telling stories has a kind of echo chamber effect where people think, 'If he can tell a story, why can't I?'"

So what's next for SMITH?

"Pickles," Smith says. "We're doing a contest with Rick's Picks, which is a really wonderful artisanal pickle company in New York."

As part of the new contest, SMITH is asking people to submit stories about being pregnant in 100 words or less, and the magazine will select 10 winners. Of that group, seven will get a "pregnancy pack" with four jars of pickles and a copy of "Not Quite What I Was Planning." Three grand-prize winners will have their images and stories plastered on pickle jars.

"How awesome is that?" he asks. "You can tell stories on the Web. You can tell stories in books. You can tell stories on pickle jars. It's populist. It's participatory. It's pickles."

Written by Express contributor Jessica Gould
Photo by Abby Pope

Posted by Express at 1:42 AM on April 9, 2008
Tagged in Books , Entertainment , Top Stories