Steve Moss

Steve Moss was an editor and publisher who created the 55 Fiction short story contest that became an international literary pastime, and who founded two major weekly newspapers in California’s Central Coast.

Moss, whose full name was Stephen Donnellan Moss, founded the San Luis Obispo New Times of San Luis Obispo, California, with two friends, Beverly Johnson and Alex Zuniga in 1986. He financed it with a few thousand dollars raised by cashing in his IRA account and borrowing from his aunt, Professor Mary Josephine Moss of San Jose State University. By 2005, the paper had a circulation of over 20,000 and revenues exceeding $1,000,000. per year.

55 Fiction Launched

By 1987 he launched the 55 Fiction short story contest for New Times readers, cautioning that submissions had to meet strict criteria, not the least of which was that “something has to happen.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/55_Fiction He wrote: “A literary work will be considered 55 Fiction if it has:

1. Fifty-five words or less (A non-negotiable rule)

2. A setting,

3. One or more characters,

4. Some conflict, and

5. A resolution. (Not limited to moral of the story)

The contest was successful and popular from the beginning with New Times readers, and submissions soon came from as far away as Australia. The contest was licensed to other publications, so long as they agreed to provide Moss with a written release from each author so that he could exclusively publish the work in book form. The contest remains an annual event.

After a few years’ contests Moss realized that he had enough material for an anthology based on the winners. He entered into an agreement with publisher John Daniel, and an illustrator and friend, Glenn Starkey, a New Times staffer. The result was two books: 1. 55 Fiction, The World's Shortest Stories: Murder, Love, Horror, Suspense, All This and Much More in the Most Amazing Short Stories Ever Written, Each One Just 55 Words Long. 2. 55 Fiction, The World's Shortest Stories of Love and Death: Passion, Betrayal, Suspicion, Revenge, All This and More in a New Collection of Amazing Short Stories-Each One Just 55 Words Long.

The books have been highly prized by college creative writing professors and high school teachers, who often either suggest or require that their students read them. The publisher of the 55 Fiction books, John Daniel, of Daniel & Daniel Publishers, Inc., McKinleyville, Calif., [ www.danielpublishing.com ] continues to print editions of them.

Education and Early Newspaper Experience

Moss attended Ventura College and Brooks Institute of Fine Art, and graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a degree in fine art in 1975. He said he discovered his talent as a writer and editor in a class taught by Barry Farrell, west coast editor of [Harper’s Magazine], which he had signed up for by happenstance. Farrell himself had taken the teaching assignment at UCSB on a lark.

Moss attended graduate school at Syracuse University, but left to become the editor in chief of the Syracuse New Times. When his marriage to his college sweetheart Sharon Bywater ended in 1986, he returned to his native California. Given a choice between a job in the advertising department of a large international winery in Modesto, or one as editor of a senior citizen newspaper in San Luis Obispo, he chose the latter despite the lower pay. Before long he realized that there was no entertainment weekly in the college town, and planned the successful launch of New Times.

Books He Wrote or Edited

1. 55 Fiction, The World's Shortest Stories (editor, 1995) 2. 55 Fiction, The World's Shortest Stories of Love and Death, (editor, 2000) 3. Groaners: The Dictionary Webster Hopes To Suppress (editor, with Brandy Brandon, 1994) 4. Seizure Salad (fiction, unpublished)

Birth, death, and memorial scholarship

Moss was born in Riverside, Calif. September 18, 1948, to Harry Walter Moss, an attorney, and Elizabeth Ann Donnellan Moss, a psychiatric social worker, both World War II veterans. He died of complications of epilepsy in his garden in San Luis Obispo on April 24, 2005. The Steve Moss Memorial Scholarship in Journalism was founded by his family and friends to support journalism students at California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. Its endowment is managed by the San Luis Obispo County Community Foundation.

Sources

San Luis Obispo Community Foundation [http://www.sloccf.org/ Daniel & Daniel Publishers, McKinlyville, Calif. www.danielpublishing.com Los Angeles Times, obituary May, 2005 www.latimes.com New Times SLO, scholarship launch, 1/8/09, www.newtimesslo.com

See also

• Literary genres • Fiction writing • flash fiction [edit] External links • 55 Fiction on New Times • www.danielpublishing.com • http://www.sloccf.org/ • http://articles.latimes.com/2005/may/17/local/me-moss17 •

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