DAVID PARRY/PA

Irenosen Okojie, Bernardine Evaristo and Nicola Williams unveil their short stories, which have been added to the Short Story Stations at Canary Wharf, London, to celebrate Black History Month

Black Britain: Writing Back with Bernardine Evaristo, Short Story Stations, Canary Wharf London, photogr. David Parry, PA Media

Award-winning author, poet and activist Bernardine Evaristo has joined forces with Canary Wharf to make short stories from up and coming black authors available for free to thousands of people throughout Black History Month. The Booker Prize winner has selected five black authors to have their stories published in Canary Wharf’s Short Story Stations – the innovative vending machines that will dispense one, three and five minute stories for free to help raise the profile of black writers.

You can choose stories by reading time or genre—and they're all free!

NYC has its share of vending machines, from ones that dispense PPE to others that dole out designer handbags. Now, the city can add a Short Story Dispenser to the list. Choosing from three categories of short stories, visitors to the Center For Fiction in Brooklyn can "push" a touchless button and the machine will dispense a scroll with a randomly chosen story for free.

Amaranthe Ivory Violeta pushes her long bangs out of her eyes as I set up my recorder and MacBook on the fourth floor of Central Library. The floor is still closed and being reset for fall 2021, so it’s eerily empty but for us. She holds an orange pencil—blunt from all the writing she has done this week—and a green leatherette journal in her lap, the matching ribbon bookmark draped lazily across her high-waisted shirt. “It’s a neat concept,” she says, describing Short Edition in a quiet voice. The French publisher has recently selected her poem, “Lunar Love,” for publication in its novel dispensers,

Foto's: Anna van Kooij

Geen kroket of een blikje frisdrank, maar een gratis verhaal trek je uit deze machine. De Verhalenmachine reist deze zomer weer langs veelbezochte plekken in Utrecht. De tournee is een aanloopje naar het International Literature Festival Utrecht (ILFU), dat eind september in Utrecht losbarst.

California’s rail stations now have dispensers that print short stories for free.

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has teamed up with a French publisher to boost literacy and encourage reading.

The Pleasant Hill BART station is one of three stations with a new short-story dispenser offering free printed reading material to passengers. (Dan Brekke/KQED)

These days, most BART riders spend their travel time staring at their phones—and understandably so. In an increasingly digitized world accelerated by the isolation of the pandemic, our lives have migrated almost entirely online.

The Station coffee shop on Beacon Hill has the city’s first short-story dispenser, installed by Seattle Public Library. It... (Alan Berner / The Seattle Times)

These days, with modern technology providing such easy access to all kinds of digital content, it’s tempting to think that reading something on paper is a thing of the past.

Perth is set to become the first Australian city to permanently hero the international literary trend: the very, very short story. The short story dispensing machines that distribute a variety of one, three or five-minute stories are the brainchild Short Edition, a French community publisher of short-form literature and will find its home at Raine Square from Friday 16 October.

Modern life may seem like it’s all about speed and efficiency, but it still involves a lot of waiting around, and when it does, we end up pulling out our phones while we wait in lines at the coffee shop or for the next train. 

 But if you stop by the Santa Barbara Public Market, you’ll find an alternative solution to boredom.

Visitors to the Public Market can find a different way to pass the time with a Short Story Dispenser, installed at the beginning of last April by the Squire Foundation in partnership with the Public Market.

The Death of Mr Robinson, a one-minute read printed by a free short story vending machine in Canary Wharf station. The story was commissioned for the project from novelist Anthony Horowitz. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

‘Short story stations’ in Canary Wharf print one- three- and five-minute reads on demand “Every single day,” says Paresh Raichura, “I’m on the lookout for something new to read.” On his hour-long commute to Canary Wharf, where he works for the Financial Ombudsman, he picks up Time Out or a local paper or the freesheet Metro, but says: “I’ve stopped reading all the long novels I used to read.”

The machines, made by French company Short Édition, will dispense free one, three and five-minute stories … with the first penned by Anthony Horowitz. Weary city workers will have a new way of passing the time on their commute once the UK’s first short-story vending machines are installed at Canary Wharf this week.