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Per King’s official site the story will be published in two parts, the first appearing in the magazine’s June/July issue with the conclusion coming in the August issue. Joining King and Hill in the June/July issue will be thriller writer Lee Child (the Jack Reacher series) and Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin). The works will be available only in the print and iPad editions of the magazine.
Nothing else is known about the King/Hill story, but let’s get back to this “Fiction for Men” thing for a moment. According to The New York Times, David Granger, the editor-in-chief of Esquire, said he has lamented the loss of space that magazines devote to publishing fiction. “It’s a struggle because, especially during the recession, we lost so many pages,” Granger elaborated. “Fiction begins to feel a little bit of a luxury.” His definition of men’s fiction? Work that is “plot-driven and exciting, where one thing happens after another, and, also at the same time, dealing with passages in a man’s life that seem common.”
The first volume of the series includes new short stories by Aaron Gwyn, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Jess Walter; and the stories will be sold only in ebook format in collaboration with Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher, beginning June 12. (Another volume will follow every few months.)
All jokes about the name of Esquire’s project aside, anything that gets King writing and people reading is A-ok with us!