Less is more with Salem-based Quick Fiction magazine

Like a delicious gourmet appetizer, what’s in it can be consumed in a bite, but the ensuing flavor fills the senses and lingers long.

Nothing in it lasts longer than two pages. It’s “cute and distinguished ... a little square of fiction.” In this age of tiny iPods, miniscule iPhones and tissue-thin cell phones that double as digital cameras, it’ll fit in your pocket, barely bigger physically than a CD. The cover arrests your attention, the content keeps it.

It’s Quick Fiction magazine, born in 2001 in Jamaica Plain and now produced in Salem.

“We wanted a project and we wanted to do something that’s worthwhile,” publisher Adam Pieroni says of the magazine’s birth. The “we” is Pieroni and his wife, Jennifer Cande Pieroni, who is Quick Fiction’s editor-in-chief.

Quick Fiction, their “baby,” is a small-press literary magazine of “micro-fiction,” stories of 500 words or fewer. Its audience, Pieroni tells the Gazette, is writers, former teachers, graduate students, readers who first received the magazine as a gift or people “who just find us.”

The young publisher says they began the project with zero subscribers, but by the first issue published, they had 60. Now, in 2007, they have an approximate 500 subscribers. Subscriptions are the basic base of distribution and income for the commercial enterprise, and the magazine is currently breaking even, Pieroni says, although the costs of producing it are rising fast. Pieroni pointed out that paper is increasingly expensive, and the recent postal rate hike really hurt.

Both he and his wife also work at full-time jobs besides producing Quick Fiction. He is a full-time graphic designer for a law firm, and she is director of development at Jumpstart, a nonprofit organization devoted to building literacy, language, social and initiative skills in young children. But Quick Fiction is not a hobby, it is a serious commercial and artistic endeavor for both.

The magazine is promoted at events: Readings at bookstores like Feed Your Head books in Salem and Grub Street in Boston; bookfairs devoted to small presses and literary magazines; and conferences such as those sponsored by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, which is based at Virginia’s George Mason University. AWP’s stated mission is to “foster literary talent and achievement, to advance the art of writing as essential to a good education, and to serve the makers, teachers, students and readers of contemporary writing.”

“Most of the writing tends towards magical realism,” Pieroni tells the Gazette during a recent interview at Jaho Coffee & Tea on Derby Street. Although there are many definitions, and the term has metamorphosed since its introduction, “magical realism” can be understood as fiction that is structured to display a rational, everyday, normal sense of reality that also, simultaneously, incorporates an acceptance of the supernatural as concurrently — and equally — real.

Magical realism is not fantasy, but engages readers in their own assessments of just what is truly “real.” As such, magical realists have many sources of inspiration to draw from — in particular, sources drawn from diverse cultures inform this branch of serious fiction.

Writers for the magazine do not receive pay. Pieroni describes his contributors: “The smallest proportion are established writers, although almost all of them have been published in literary magazines.”

Asked what his greatest challenge is in publishing Quick Fiction, he pauses, thinks a minute, and then speaks. “Having time to have a better relationship with our readers,” he answers. “I feel it’s very important ... it’s an honor to have anyone interested in this writing.”

As for his greatest joy in publishing the magazine, he says, “That’s easy. I guess someone comes up to us at a book fair and says ‘It’s my favorite magazine ... I love the cover ... I love the content.’”

Future plans include the establishment of a small-press book publishing venture, a challenge to which he looks forward. “I like to create things from scratch... to figure out how things work,” Pieroni says. He feels his wife’s many talents and skills ensure they’ll build something great together.

The two have their moms to thank for meeting, since their parents worked together when they were growing up. But each went their own ways to college: Adam to Indiana University at Bloomington to earn a bachelor’s in English, Jennifer to Emerson College in Boston, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in writing, literature and publishing.

While in college, Pieroni launched a large, hardcopy magazine entitled Cocked and Ready, which lasted for two years. It published fiction, photography, poetry and art. Jennifer was asked to submit a story, and the two young writers continued a relationship that eventually resulted in their marriage.

After graduation, they lived in Jamaica Plain, where the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail will lead you past the historic homes of artists and writers like Sylvia Plath and the atmosphere is liberal, artsy and activist. They moved to Salem two years ago.

The English poet Lord Byron wrote, “But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.”

Quick Fiction magazine may be a “small drop of ink,” almost literally, but its publishers hope its little stories, like tiny seeds, will blossom from that dew — and produce a garden of thought in the world.

Visit Quick Fiction magazine at www.quickfiction.org.