Buckle up. You are about to take a walk through the DIY, GenX media landscape of the nineties. Writer Larry Smith, founder of SMITH magazine, and Brad circled around each other for three decades. Until now.
Sit back while they talk about boing boing, Mondo2000, Might Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Mother Jones, Alternet, and all the publications that shaped a generation of writers. And, how that inspired Larry to launch the Six-Word Memoirs project with Twitter in 2006. Today, 1.7 million people have contributed stories.
(And yes, we touched on his wife, Piper Kerman, and her work in prison reform.)
About Larry Smith
Called “on a quest to spark the creativity in everyone,” by O: The Oprah Magazine, Larry Smith is the creator of one of the word’s first user-generated storytelling communities, SMITH Magazine, launched in 2006.
Soon after, Larry founded the Six-Word Memoir project with a then unknown-startup called Twitter. Now more than 1.7 million six-word stories have been shared on SixWordMemoirs.com, across its social media channels, and millions more in classrooms, conferences, festivals, and corporate events. Writing in The New Yorker about Six-Word Memoirs, Lizzy Widdicombe wrote, “You can spend a lifetime brainstorming,” while the Los Angeles Times announced, “Six-Word Memoirs have been lodged in the literary firmament.”
In 2018, Larry turned one Six-Word Memoir, “Escaped war; war never escaped me,” into a 70-minute one-woman show written by and starring 17-year-old Syrian refugee, Sara Abou Rashed. Larry produced and directed A Map of Myself: a one-woman revolution on war, immigration, language, home, history, DNA, and everything in between, which debuted in Columbus, Ohio and has since been brought to stated across Ohio, Chicago and Philadelphia.
Larry’s online projects have been the inspiration for a dozen books, including nine Six-Word Memoir books, three graphic novels (one of which, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, conceived by Smith and written by Josh Neufeld, was a NYT bestseller), and an anthology, The Moment: Wild, Poignant, Life-Changing Stories from 125 Writers and Artists Famous & Obscure edited by Larry Smith. Larry has been a writer and editor at Men’s Journal, ESPN Magazine, Yahoo Internet Life, and Might magazines. He has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Slate, Popular Science, Wired, Salon, and SPIN.
Larry’s personal essays are found in the anthologies Maybe Baby, Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, and Devotion; Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves; and Unscrolled: 54 Writers and Artists Wrestle With the Torah.
He lives in Berkeley, CA with his wife, the writer Piper Kerman, and their son.
