It has been a great pleasure to gather and present to you all these stories from Atlanta fiction writers. Still, I wasn’t able to corral every fiction writer who lives in Atlanta. There are so many budding fiction writers coming out of this city. I chose to include those writers actively at work. And still, some other writers whom I was not able to connect with, or who did not have something ready for this at this time, I was not able to include. But I want to thank all those who did contribute for helping to put together this stellar month of fiction from Atlanta:

Christopher Bundy, Blake Butler, Scott Daughtridge, Matt DeBenedictis, Anthony Grooms, Sheri Joseph, Collin Kelley, Jesse Lichtenstein, Man Martin, Amy McDaniel, Charles McNair, Andy Plattner, Laura Relyea, Sam Reid, Josh Russell, Matt Sailor, Darby Sanders, Anna Schachner, Lydia Ship, Ben Spivey, Susan Rebecca White, and Wyatt Williams.

As you can see, in recent years Atlanta’s literary scene has come on kickin’. Of course it’s always been here, but it feels like things have stepped into high gear in the last ten years or so. And, as this is a fiction site, I haven’t said a peep about the fabulous poets and nonfiction writers who live amongst us. I mean the Poet Laureate teaches at Emory! If Atlanta is not a literary community it is at least a not-so-loose gathering of like-minded recluses who occasionally find themselves at the same readings. But that sounds to me a lot like a lit scene. I used to tell writerly friends that there wasn’t much going on here, that it probably wasn’t worth it to think about moving here, even if the rents were comparably cheap to similarly-sized cities. But now I say, come join us. There’s a lot happening, and it’s a great city, a great community to be a part of. If you come down South, you may never go back where you’re from. Most of us aren’t from around here anyway. This is just the place we landed.