New stories were born

Brevity journal was founded by Dinty W. Moore in 1997, when flash nonfiction as a distinct genre was deemed relatively new (albeit with many ancient precedents) and the internet was a new frontier. The journal's full archive is available for readers to peruse, and its early issues present a handful of pieces on quaint and simple HTML pages illustrated with a little monochrome graphic. There's little consistency in the formatting or style and not much to draw out from the writing itself, but there is an anchoring effect in keeping that material available--a gravitas the publication has earned with the passage of time and its position as a pioneering literary space in the newfound digital landscape where Usenet, message boards and chat rooms dominated.