Founded in Winter 2000, Falling Star presents work from the world's emerging writers and established literary voices; recent contributors hail from Michigan and Poland, L.A. Our issues regularly circulate in the bookstores and art havens of Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, Ventura, and other national markets.Falling Star began in the Winter of 2000 as a one-time shot - it was supposed to be o
ne issue, short, brilliant,over.But great work kept pouring in to the e-mail box from all over the globe. And reading it is a good time.In years past, writers have been paid with nominal amounts and in copy, granting them print exposure as wide as we could carry the magazine. We appeared annually at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and other small press festivals beginning in 2006, but a recent event changed that. In 2007 we received a letter from Stanley Baldwin in Montague, Michigan. Inside was a short note, his business card, and a check for $10 that we had sent his wife in August 2001 as payment for publishing her poem 'Where Have All the Heroes Gone?' in the very first issue of Falling Star. The note read: Dear Matt, I found your check while going over some of Jean's things. Jean passed away on August 17, 2006. - Stan Baldwin When I was an early writer, I held on to checks quite a while, often propping them up on my desk and staring at them, placing them in a strategic location where I'd see them as I walked around the house, eventually cashing them when I needed the money. Those checks meant much more than the money; they were a symbol that I was succeeding. I suspect Jean was doing the same thing. She held on to our check until the day she died. So when we were wrestling with the idea of going back to the LA Times Festival of Books, we couldn't bring ourselves to shell out $1000+ for a booth this time. And in light of Stan's letter, now we know why. So we're paying our writers more each time around. Along with copies of the magazine all contributors receive a check for their work, and it's theirs to do with as they please. Call it the Baldwin Act, a stimulus package for writers. We're also more available at bookstores on the West Coast and plan to revisit the streets of New York this month. After all, writing isn't just about where we go in our minds, it's the places we get to go and spread the word that good work keeps going on.
Falling Star Magazine Falling Star Magazine is a print quarterly featuring short fiction, poetry and art of all mediums. and the U.K.
