In 2011, Douglas Sovern wrote the groundbreaking Twitter novel TweetHeart. It was the first work of its kind: An entire novel, written live, on the fly, in the daily tweets of its protagonist. It took ten months to tell the story, which won an international following. You can read all about TweetHeart, and read the 1600 archived tweets, here.

In 2012, Doug joined The Writers Studio, San Francisco, and started writing short stories. His debut story appeared in 2013 in Gemini Magazine and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Since then, his fiction has been featured in Narrative, Sand Hill Review, Black & White, Crack The Spine, Hobo Pancakes, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Penmen Review,  EDGE Literary Journal, Jet Fuel Review, Alimentum, Mulberry Fork Review, J Lit, The Madison Review, Catamaran and The Noyo River Review, and been nominated for three more Pushcarts and for the Best of the West. His story “Indira” was chosen by Narrative as one of its Top Five Stories of 2013-14.  His story “Skin” was honored as a Top Ten finalist in Narrative’s Winter 2015 Story Contest and in Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope: All-Story 2015 Short Fiction Contest, and a newer version of that story appears in The Writers Studio @ 30 anthology, published  in May 2017 by Epiphany Editions. “Indira” also won the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference Short Story Contest in 2018.

His journalism work has appeared in The New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle, and his essay about the 2020 presidential election appeared in the acclaimed anthology “Now What? Essays On Life After Trump.”

Doug is a graduate of Brown University. He has studied fiction and screenwriting at UC Berkeley and the Esalen Institute. He is a graduate of the Writers Boot Camp Professional Screenwriting Training Program in Los Angeles. He attended the 2013 Napa Valley Writers Conference, where he was mentored by author Yiyun Li.  In 2014, he studied “The Art of the Story” with legendary editor Tom Jenks. In 2015, 2016 and 2019 he was accepted to the prestigious LitCamp writers conference, workshopping with Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Harding (“Tinkers”) , Anthony Marra and Jonathan Lethem. In 2018, he workshopped with Charles Baxter at the Writing By Writers conference and with Elizabeth McKenzie at the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. In October 2019, he returned to Writing By Writers to work with Rebecca Makkai. Now he’s seeking representation for his debut collection of short stories, Almost Every One Of Us, and is working on his first novel, All Great And Precious Things.

Doug read his work at San Francisco’s annual LitQuake literary festival in 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2021. For five years, he hosted THERE, a monthly reading series showcasing mostly Oakland and Berkeley writers, at the Octopus Literary Salon in Oakland.

Read an interview with Doug about fiction writing in Mulberry Fork Review, MFR 3.3

SHORT STORIES:

“The Blogger Wolf” – published in Gemini Magazine,  June 30, 2013; appeared again in slightly different form in Green Hills Literary Lantern, July 8, 2014. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

“Morning Rush” – published in Black & White, January 2014 (print only, available for purchase)

AUDIOBOOK:  Listen to Doug read his produced version of “Morning Rush”

“Indira” – Story of the Week, Narrative Magazine, May 12, 2014 – (Winner: Top 5 Stories of the Year, 2013-14). Nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Republished in The Noyo River Review, 2019 issue.

“Co-Anchors” – published in Crack The Spine, May 28, 2014, and again in the CTS Summer 2014 Anthology, August 17, 2014

“Abe Vigoda Is Still Alive” – published in Hobo Pancakes, June 3, 2014, and again in The Penmen Review, July 9, 2014

“Almost Every One Of Us” – published in Sand Hill Review, July 4, 2014. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Appeared again in slightly different form in J Lit, the monthly fiction section of J Weekly, 12/31/15

“Fully Committed” – published in Jet Fuel Review, Spring 2015 Issue, and again in the July 2015 issue of Alimentum

“Where We’ll Hide When The Nazis Come” – published in July 2015 Issue 3, Volume 3 of Mulberry Fork Review. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

“Who Knows How It Will All Come Out?” – published in October 2015 issue (V9) of EDGE Literary Journal (print only, available for purchase)

“Skin” – published in July 2016, in the Spring 2016 issue of The Madison Review.  Print only, available for online purchase.

A revised version of “Skin” appears in the Writers Studio At 30 anthology, published by Epiphany Editions in 2017, which is available for purchase.

“Grace Notes” – published in February 2019, Winter 2019 issue of Catamaran Literary Reader, a gorgeous magazine which is also available for purchase online. The hyperlink will take you to the online archive of the story.