Fiction is a literary magazine founded in 1972 by Mark Jay Mirsky

Mark Jay Mirsky

Mark Jay Mirsky is an American writer and professor of English at City College of New York.His first three novels present a humorous and scathing portrait of the Jewish community of and around Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester...

, Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme was an American author known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston , co-founder of Fiction Donald...

, and Max Frisch

Max Frisch

Max Rudolf Frisch was a Swiss playwright and novelist, regarded as highly representative of German-language literature after World War II. In his creative works Frisch paid particular attention to issues relating to problems of human identity, individuality, responsibility, morality and political...

. It is published by the City College of New York

City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

.

In its early years, Fiction was published in tabloid format and featured experimental work by such writers as John Barth

John Barth

John Simmons Barth is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work.-Life:...

, Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...

, Ronald Sukenick

Ronald Sukenick

Ronald Sukenick was an American writer and literary theorist.-Life:Sukenick studied at Cornell University, and wrote his doctoral thesis on Wallace Stevens, at Brandeis University ....

, Steve Katz

Steve Katz (writer)

Steve Katz is an American writer. He is considered an early post-modern or avant-garde writer for works such as The Exagggerations of Peter Prince , and Saw...

, Russell Banks

Russell Banks

Russell Banks is an American writer of fiction and poetry.- Biography :Russell Banks was born in Newton, Massachusetts on March 28, 1940. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in upstate New York, and has been named a New York State Author. He is also...

, Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

, and J.G. Ballard. It later took the form of a more traditional paperback literary magazine, publishing short works by Reinaldo Arenas

Reinaldo Arenas

Reinaldo Arenas was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government.- Life :...

, Isaac Babel

Isaac Babel

Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel was a Russian language journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short story writer. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, Story of My Dovecote, and Tales of Odessa, all of which are considered masterpieces of Russian literature...

, Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme was an American author known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston , co-founder of Fiction Donald...

, Mei Chin

Mei Chin

Mei Chin is a fiction and food writer living in Dublin.Her short stories have appeared in Fiction and Bomb Magazine and are characterized by a combination of the fantastic and the mundane.She won the James Beard Foundation's M.F.K...

, Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...

, Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...

, Natalia Ginzburg

Natalia Ginzburg

Natalia Ginzburg née Levi was an award-winning Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short stories and essays, for which she received the Strega Prize and Bagutta Prize...

, Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist...

, Robie Macauley

Robie Macauley

Robie Mayhew Macauley was an editor, novelist and critic whose literary career spanned over 50 years.-Early life:...

, Robert Musil

Robert Musil

Robert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels...

, Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...

, Manuel Puig

Manuel Puig

Manuel Puig was an Argentine author...

, and John Yau

John Yau

John Yau is an American poet and critic who lives in New York City. He received his B.A. from Bard College in 1972 and his M.F.A. from Brooklyn College in 1978...

.http://www.fictioninc.com/fictionindex.php.

Though the magazine ostensibly focuses on publishing fiction, as its name implies, it has recently also featured excerpts from Robert Musil

Robert Musil

Robert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels...

's diaries and letters, as well as various writings with an autobiographical slant.