There’s a new kind of vending machine on the South Coast that pops out literature. The Squire Foundation and the Santa Barbara Public Market are introducing the Short Edition Short Story Dispenser to the Santa Barbara Community.

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,

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.

Need something to read?

My morning or afternoon walk will usually take me over to the Copley/Prudential malls, which are only 10 minutes away from me. And every time I head into the Prudential side of the mall, I stop off at this thing that I discovered a few months ago...