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LEAN magazine

@leanmag.bsky.social
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Magazine for less-protagonist-centered fiction // Contributors get paid // Sign up for the newsletter here: tinyurl.com/nhbn53kn

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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
🚨A LEAN Magazine Announcement🚨 LEAN is devoted to "non-protagonist-centered-writing" but this has always been a misnomer, not accurately reflecting the work published in the magazine, or the conceptual gist, and so a change is necessary: Less-protagonist-centered writing
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
🚨A LEAN Magazine Announcement🚨 LEAN is devoted to "non-protagonist-centered-writing" but this has always been a misnomer, not accurately reflecting the work published in the magazine, or the conceptual gist, and so a change is necessary: Less-protagonist-centered writing
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
LEAN is back again with issue #12! J S Khan takes us on a 19th century British ship whose lively passengers are contained byt a looming event @carlterver depicts real uncanny change in modern Nigeria tuned to "the slappiness of sound" www.lean-mag.com
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Home | LEAN magazine
LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.
031
LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
LEAN is back again with issue #12! J S Khan takes us on a 19th century British ship whose lively passengers are contained byt a looming event @carlterver depicts real uncanny change in modern Nigeria tuned to "the slappiness of sound" www.lean-mag.com
lean-mag.com
Home | LEAN magazine
LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.
031
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Jill Biden charges around 50k for an event, Rachel Maddow closer to 100k...that's what ALA members are increasingly paying for... this celebrity-worship that has little-to-nothing to do with libraries which if you haven't heard are having a hard time out there...ALA is so profoundly out of touch!
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Jill Biden charges around 50k for an event, Rachel Maddow closer to 100k...that's what ALA members are increasingly paying for... this celebrity-worship that has little-to-nothing to do with libraries which if you haven't heard are having a hard time out there...ALA is so profoundly out of touch!
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
None of ALA's featured speakers are librarians or connected to libraries in any meaningful way. It's all about booking celebrities, paying them huge honoraria and then passing that along to members in the form of obscene conference fees. What a racket!
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Matt Leibel @mattleibel.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Pleased to have a new story about life in a very odd small town in @leanmag.bsky.social the magazine for “non-protagonist-centered fiction”
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
We are officially LEANing into spring over here with issue #11! Matt Leibel's "Town" describes a sort of place that's bigger and smaller than the sum of its parts. Meanwhile Selen Ozturk's story "Aurora" is all about the push-and-pull between a story and its writer. www.lean-mag.com
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LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
In the spirit of practicing what I preach here's a non-protagonist-centered short story about Vikings, Christianity and what happens when the present meets the past. clereviewofbooks.com/if-the-vikin...
clereviewofbooks.com
If the Vikings - Cleveland Review of Books
None of them had wallets or cell-phones or any ID. Just Viking stuff.
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
In the spirit of practicing what I preach here's a non-protagonist-centered short story about Vikings, Christianity and what happens when the present meets the past. clereviewofbooks.com/if-the-vikin...
clereviewofbooks.com
If the Vikings - Cleveland Review of Books
None of them had wallets or cell-phones or any ID. Just Viking stuff.
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
Here's an essay I wrote calling on lit mags to use their about pages to tell us about the kind of writing they publish. litmagnews.substack.com/p/what-are-o...
litmagnews.substack.com
What Are Our Literary Magazines All About?
"What do our literary magazines seek to accomplish?"
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
Here's an essay I wrote calling on lit mags to use their about pages to tell us about the kind of writing they publish. litmagnews.substack.com/p/what-are-o...
litmagnews.substack.com
What Are Our Literary Magazines All About?
"What do our literary magazines seek to accomplish?"
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Sophie Drukman-Feldstein @sophiedrukman.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
Check out my short story “Economy of Language” in @leanmag.bsky.social! This one was arduous to write, by which I mean that I had a great time. Very excited that it found a home in a magazine I admire so much www.lean-mag.com/economyoflan...
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Sophie Drukman-Feldstein
Economy of Language
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
LEAN magazine is here for the holidays with Issue #10 Sophie Drukman-Feldstein's "Economy of Language" depicts a world of exhaustible speech - you better watch what you say Meanwhile Owen Yingling's "Mene Mene" is a story of uncertain resurrection www.lean-mag.com
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LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
LEAN Magazine is open for business! Please send along your work. LEAN has mostly focused on fiction but we're very interested in memoir, especially the kind that evokes the contexts and conditions of life, sidelining the individual for the sake of conveying useful information
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Rose Facchini @rosefacchini.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
Another translation published! Check out my translation of Diego Lama’s story “The Silent City” in LEAN. A big thanks to Semyon Khokhlov for featuring us!
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Diego Lama
The Silent City
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
LEAN magazine is back at it with issue #9! Diego Lama's "The Silent City," translated by Rose Facchini, portrays a besieged city expanding toward the infinite. Stephen Mortland's amazing story "Three Sofias" is all about promiscuous acts of attention. www.lean-mag.com
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Home | LEAN magazine
LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.
041
LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
LEAN magazine is back at it with issue #9! Diego Lama's "The Silent City," translated by Rose Facchini, portrays a besieged city expanding toward the infinite. Stephen Mortland's amazing story "Three Sofias" is all about promiscuous acts of attention. www.lean-mag.com
lean-mag.com
Home | LEAN magazine
LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.
041
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
The new LEAN Magazine - Issue 8 - is here! Featuring Jon Conley's story of a hot day at the beach where the people aren't quite right. And a story by Jon Doughboy that stirs up a heteroglossic stew on a very clear night in Idaho. www.lean-mag.com
lean-mag.com
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
The new LEAN Magazine - Issue 8 - is here! Featuring Jon Conley's story of a hot day at the beach where the people aren't quite right. And a story by Jon Doughboy that stirs up a heteroglossic stew on a very clear night in Idaho. www.lean-mag.com
lean-mag.com
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Very excited to share this essay about the great German author Alexander Kluge whose unusual work is all about common human feelings and "happy endings that don't lie." www.full-stop.net/2025/03/06/f...
full-stop.net
The Human Situation in the Work of Alexander Kluge
All of Kluge’s books contribute to one large, ongoing project to build up a toolkit of resistant feelings that readers can use to plot their own ways out.
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Very excited to share this essay about the great German author Alexander Kluge whose unusual work is all about common human feelings and "happy endings that don't lie." www.full-stop.net/2025/03/06/f...
full-stop.net
The Human Situation in the Work of Alexander Kluge
All of Kluge’s books contribute to one large, ongoing project to build up a toolkit of resistant feelings that readers can use to plot their own ways out.
152
LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
"It's really not so easy to find sentences that explain who you are. But maybe it's not so important, either." ---Jenny Erpenbeck
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
There's nothing essential about narrative modes and that's especially true when it comes to their relation to protagonism. 3rd person can be used to center an individual just as 1st person can be used to sideline them.
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
There's nothing essential about narrative modes and that's especially true when it comes to their relation to protagonism. 3rd person can be used to center an individual just as 1st person can be used to sideline them.
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
Self-centered protagonism is a problem that demands formal solutions. It's not enough for a character to be "self-aware" or even to look out beyond themselves because such looking can easily turn into self-affirmation.
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Anyway, it's a really great work out recently from @spurleditions.bsky.social in a new translation by Dana Lupo
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
The narrative does not present this primarily as a problem for the hero but rather as a problem for other people, and that's precisely because this novel does not subscribe to the modern dogma of protagonist supremacy
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
The utopian novel The Known Southern Land (1676) is the kind of early work that can help us understand the blind spots of the modern novel's insistence on the supremacy of the protagonist...
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
The utopian novel The Known Southern Land (1676) is the kind of early work that can help us understand the blind spots of the modern novel's insistence on the supremacy of the protagonist...
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 21/08/2024
LEAN magazine is open for non-protagonist-centered business. Are you tired of lit that doggedly tracks the private concerns of an individual? Do you think the individual story is always just one element in a larger human situation? If you do, send your stuff to LEAN!
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
The 1st issue of LEAN - with work by Caren Beilin and Tom Comitta - is now in print! It'll soon be available for free in Philly bookstores and cafes but I'm also giving 10 away to anyone outside the city. Just DM me if you'd like one!
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
LEAN #7 is here! A blast from the past: Alphonse Daudet's story "A Game of Billiards" (1873) in a new translation by Elliot Menard And the present: Two stories by contemporary Italian writer Diego Lama translated by Rose Facchini www.lean-mag.com
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LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
LEAN #7 is here! A blast from the past: Alphonse Daudet's story "A Game of Billiards" (1873) in a new translation by Elliot Menard And the present: Two stories by contemporary Italian writer Diego Lama translated by Rose Facchini www.lean-mag.com
lean-mag.com
Home | LEAN magazine
LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.
051
LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
The 1st issue of LEAN - with work by Caren Beilin and Tom Comitta - is now in print! It'll soon be available for free in Philly bookstores and cafes but I'm also giving 10 away to anyone outside the city. Just DM me if you'd like one!
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
LEAN is not just for fiction. Memoir has all sorts of non-protagonist-centered possibilities (really!) and there are some fascinating examples from Gluckel of Hameln's Memoirs to Alexander Kluge's Air Raid to Hua Hsu's recent Stay True. So send your unorthodox memoir along!
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 21/08/2024
LEAN magazine is open for non-protagonist-centered business. Are you tired of lit that doggedly tracks the private concerns of an individual? Do you think the individual story is always just one element in a larger human situation? If you do, send your stuff to LEAN!
032
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 09/06/2024
Listen to me. You have to go to Ndakaaru. You have to find your little brother. At any cost. Do you hear? You have to bring him back here, to Kayar. Dead or alive. Even just his bones. Do you hear? --from Ken Bugul's Coming and Going at lean-mag.com
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LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.
021
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 06/06/2024
The new issue of LEAN is here! It features an excerpt from Senegalese writer Ken Bugul's novel Coming and Going (originally Aller et Retour) in a translation by Julianna Blair Watson and Hugo Bujon. www.lean-mag.com
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Home | LEAN magazine
LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.
021
LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 09/06/2024
Listen to me. You have to go to Ndakaaru. You have to find your little brother. At any cost. Do you hear? You have to bring him back here, to Kayar. Dead or alive. Even just his bones. Do you hear? --from Ken Bugul's Coming and Going at lean-mag.com
lean-mag.com
Home | LEAN magazine
LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.
021
LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 06/06/2024
The new issue of LEAN is here! It features an excerpt from Senegalese writer Ken Bugul's novel Coming and Going (originally Aller et Retour) in a translation by Julianna Blair Watson and Hugo Bujon. www.lean-mag.com
lean-mag.com
Home | LEAN magazine
LEAN magazine is devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction, an approach to literature that formally deemphasizes the protagonist.
021
LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 24/02/2024
In the usual telling, the Pied Piper is a mercenary who punishes the people of Hamelin for greedily welshing on their agreement, but in Ian Maxton's retelling the Piper is a trickster figure who puts the people to a moral test... www.lean-mag.com/rats
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 24/02/2024
You'll never look at a bouquet of dried flowers in quite the same way again after reading Tor Ulven's "The Bouquet Hanging by a Thread", appearing for the first time in English in a translation by Jordan Barger in the latest issue of LEAN! www.lean-mag.com/ulven
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 22/02/2024
The fifth issue of LEAN is here! It features Ian Maxton's retelling of the Pied Piper tale, and two pieces, appearing for the first time in English translation by Jordan Barger, by the great Norwegian author Tor Ulven. www.lean-mag.com
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 11/01/2024
Really excited to share this essay about the capacity of non-protagonist-centered fiction to depict common human experience through parts of the body. With readings of Nanni Balestrini's The Unseen and Fowzia Karimi's Above Us the Milky Way. www.full-stop.net/2024/01/11/f...
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 04/01/2024
Writers of the world, LEAN magazine is open for non-protagonist-centered business! We think there's a lot more to any story than a protagonist's journey. If you agree, send in your work. And Happy New Year!
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 13/11/2023
We can't, as Lukacs stresses, resurrect the Greek world, but we should, for our health, lean into its facts: "man does not stand alone...his relations to others and the structures which arise therefrom are as full of substance as he is himself."
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LEAN magazine @leanmag.bsky.social · 26/10/2023
The problem with treating a fictional character like a real person is not that it's critically naïve (Toril Moi has decisively put that idea to rest) but rather that it supercharges the centrality of the protagonist such that we read the text even more through them.
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