Twitter Fiction Festival explores literary innovation 120 characters at a time

Wednesday marked the beginning of the first annual Twitter Fiction Festival. The social media site will host a flock of authors from all over the planet who will tweet their stories in 120 characters or less for five days.

For years writers have been using the site as an experimental way to reach fans with short bursts of text and just this past May, The New Yorker brought major attention to microfiction by tweeting and entire short story. For ten days Jennifer Egan’s “Black Box” was tweeted one line at a time. You can guess why they chose a short story.

The festival will include established authors Lauren Beukes, Jennifer Wilson, Andrew Pyper, and others who will be performing literary feats such as seriously condensing The Turn of the Screw and retelling one hundred Greek myths in one hundred tweets. @Twitterbooks will also highlight some favorite’s from amateurs as long as their tweets include “#twitterfiction”.

This nifty festival is a perfect example of the fun, creative, and innovative possibilities and power behind one of the world’s top social media sites. Hopefully this will prove that Twitter can be so much more than just a place for mundane information and insane rants… we’re looking at you, Donald Trump.