Now Boarding All New Writers…
Newsletter 007
Dear Writers,
We are officially three months since the beta launch of Switch-Lit and grateful for all the curiosity and support that comes with trying something unpredictable and new.
Many of you have discovered Switch-Lit this past week. You likely arrived at our imaginative destination in a remote corner of the Internet courtesy of the promotion by our aptly named design partner, Studio Airport, or the surreal illustrated sculptures by Rob & Robin placed throughout the Switch-Lit universe.
We first connected with Studio Airport in the late Spring of 2022, when we traveled from Portland, Oregon to their storied city of Utrecht, Netherlands. There, we met Bram Broerse, Maurits Wouters, and Carsten Pölking of Studio Airport (and Jan-Maarten Schott of September Digital) as the leaders of an extraordinary design team that would bring our more than ordinary vision of Switch-Lit to life.
Their artful perspective, literary sensibilities, and interdisciplinary spirit helped us to reconcile the primal human art of collaborative storytelling with the precarious digital tools and machines in this age of social media that now moves, for better or worse, towards artificial intelligence.
But there was also this curious wildcard: They were neither American nor was English any of their native languages. By simply being from another country and shaped by a different language, could these nuances translate into a platform that was more international and cross-cultural than not?
As of this week, we’re excited to see that the Switch-Lit community of currently active writers comes from these cities around the world:
North America:
Portland, United States
New York City, United States
Los Angeles, United States
Toronto, Canada
Chicago, United States
Pittsburgh, United States
San Francisco, United States
Boston, United States
Kansas City, United States
Seattle, United States
Europe:
Utrecht, Netherlands
Berlin, Germany
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Krakow, Poland
Paris, France
Barcelona, Spain
Rome, Italy
Castrop-Rauxel, Germany
Tours, France
Coimbra, Portugal
Asia:
Hong Kong, China
Jakarta, Indonesia
Mumbai, India
South America:
Porto Alegre, Brazil
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Australia:
Melbourne, Australia
Thanks again for your natural curiosity as we continue building Switch-Lit into a public space for the collective imagination of writers and storytellers around the world like you. Feel free to share Switch-Lit with others, wherever they may be.
Meanwhile, we look forward to reading (and publishing) your stories and poems.
Ken
Editor, Switch-Lit
Featured prompt:
Prompt 3
Write a collaborative poem that maps to the infinitely non-repeating digits of the number pi (3.14159265…). The final title must be 3 words followed by a period. The poem’s first line by the first poet must be 1 word, the second line by the other poet must be 4 words, and so on according to the remaining number of turns for each poet..
by Switch-Lit
Did you know?
Every writer on Switch-Lit chooses a unique color (on a color wheel or via hex code) as their avatar to intentionally allow for abstract representation, a level of secrecy, and a removal of our image-based biases.
When you a finish a Switch-Lit story or poem, our creative code automatically blends your color, your partner’s color, and the number of chapters (or lines) in your story (or poem) into an original cover art and representation of your co-created world:
Don’t give up.
“Imagination should be used not to escape reality, but to create it.”
– Colin Wilson, English novelist
Contact us:
📟 Ping us with any questions, requests, or proposals for Switch-Lit:
editors@switch-lit.com