ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In the world of literary fiction, Jim Hanas is an ebook pioneer.
Since 1999, his short stories have appeared in acclaimed journals like McSweeney's, One Story, and Fence, and he released his first ebook of previously published stories in 2006.
Titled Single -- with cover art inspired by 7" vinyl "singles" -- it appeared a year before the Kindle and iPhone were introduced and anticipated Amazon's introduction of Kindle Singles by five years. To date, readers have downloaded more than 10,000 copies.
Hanas's second ebook anthology, 2009's Cassingle, attracted mainstream attention when Toronto's Eye Weekly reviewed it in print (still rare for an ebook), declaring, "the future of publishing ... won't entirely look like Hanas's experiment in free, but it will look more like it than not." Toronto's ECW Press quickly signed Hanas as the first author for its Joyland eBook imprint, which launched in 2010 with the publication of his full-length collection, Why They Cried.
In its review of the release, literary website The Rumpus concluded, "Much of the conversation around ebooks has revolved around the question of invisibility -- that is, how easily the device can disappear, leaving just the human reader and the text. Since Hanas writes with a swift clip, deploys images so judiciously and vividly, and demonstrates real insight into the way we live now, I imagine most readers will be able to forget their devices and fall into these stories, either after overcoming a first impression or, more likely, right away."
Hanas has spoken about digital publishing at Book Camp NYC and as a Digital Book World Roundtable panelist. He has been written about by the New York Times, Scientific American, and Mediabistro. He is the co-curator of Adult Education, a monthly lecture series that is regularly featured in The New Yorker, and a prolific freelance writer whose non-fiction has appeared in dozens of publications, including Slate, Salon, and the New York Post.
He lives in Brooklyn and online at jimhanas.com.
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