For those of you who have followed us in the past, thank you for sticking around through our hiatus. We hope you enjoy our new focus on short fiction and creative non-fiction.

For those of you who are joining for the first time, let me catch you up. Empty Sink Publishing began life as an online literary and arts magazine in November 2013. Over three years, we published eighteen issues of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and visual art, and we loved every minute of it.

Things change, as they tend to do, and for a multitude of reasons, around the three year mark, we were forced to make some decisions. After much research and discussion, we decided to narrow our focus and publish one piece of short fiction or creative non-fiction a month. This would give us more time to work with authors on their pieces and promote those pieces on social media.

For our first story, we chose “Automatically Hip” by author John McCaffrey. In “Automatically Hip,” McCaffrey reflects on the life of jazz pianist Thelonious Monk–specifically, the time when he was arrested for possession of drugs that were not his, and the subsequent impact of his incarceration on those around him. The story is told as a series of monologues, and the language and punctuation mimic a jazz solo. This story has a rhythm, and once you fall in, you’re in ’til the last note, baby.

So, please enjoy “Automatically Hip,” and when you get done reading the piece, hop over to our new Author Q & A section to learn more about the writer and the cartoon that inspired this story.

And if you want to get a sneak peek at our upcoming releases, sign up for the Empty Sink newsletter. I promise: we only write when we have something worth saying or updates worth paying attention to.

Take care, keep reading, and thank you for joining us for the relaunch of Empty Sink Publishing!
–E. Branden Hart, Executive Editor, 04/01/2017