Locative narratives and storied cities

This article provides three perspectives on the genesis of a book of flash fiction about the city. It is written by the three co-editors, who also contributed flash fiction stories to the book. Their aim for the book was to facilitate reading as a narrative spatial practice. Both the stories and the book itself were designed and edited to encourage readers to take the book into the city and read the stories in situ, facilitating a shared conversation between the reader, the printed page and the environment. Each co-editor, one of whom originally conceived the project, the second of whom is also the book’s designer, and the third of whom commissioned and published the book, provides their individual critical reflections on both context and process. They discuss the particular theories of space, narrative and book design on which the project draws, including Bakhtin’s notion of the literary chronotope, Seamon’s concept of “place-ballets” and Hochuli and Kinross’s discussion of the “physical presence of the [book] object.” They elaborate on the relationship of these theories to specific writing, design and editing practices employed in the project, which are also discussed in some detail