SPL short story dispensers

The SPL short story dispenser located at The Station coffee house. Photo courtesy SPL.

By Cheryl Murfin

Published March 2023

Updated March 9, 2023

Machines that dispense short stories for FREE?

Yes! And for the time being parents and teen readers will find them at Seattle Public Library's (SPL) downtown Central Library and Beacon Hill's The Station coffee shop – free stories, no library card required! The Station is located at 1600 S Roberto Maestas Festival St, near Beacon Hill Library.

SPL's short story dispensers, funded by the Seattle Public Library Foundation, provide on-demand printed short stories that can be read in one, three or five minutes depending on which option you choose. The story dispensers feature a variety of story genres and although they are not recommended for young readers, teens and parents are likely to find many small but riveting hits of literature.

The dispensers are designed to move around and SPL plans to circulate them to different libraries in the system and other locations around Seattle in the coming year.

This week a collection of stories written by Northwest authors was added to the machines’ story coffers. The local collection features pieces from authors like Kristen Millares Young, a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award for creative nonfiction and a writing workshop instructor at the library. Katie Kurtz and Angie McCullagh, participants of the SPL's 2023 Writers’ Room Residency, are also on the local author list.

SPL's Elisa Murray and librarians who work on the dispenser team say that all stories dispensed through the program are for a general audience but warned some contain strong language or themes.

"Although there is nothing too adult in the collection, I think this is a stretch to recommend this to kids, except for the novelty of it," said Linda Johns, adult services librarian at The Seattle Public Library's Central Library. "You can't control which story you’ll get; you might get something a bit scary, you might get an Emily Dickinson poem, or maybe you’ll get a sweet poem about a dog that isn't meant for kids but there's a dog so it will do."

Trying to get a dispenser to spit out a kid-friendly dog story "could be wasteful" in terms of parent time and machine paper.

But for "teens who read books for adults, all of it is good," Johns added. Parents of middle-school age kids interested in checking out dispensed stories should consider reading pieces generated by the machines first and/or with their child.

What you do have control over is genre. For example, to get to pieces written Northwest authors select the "Local Writers" option on a story dispenser. Selection is done with a wave of a hand in this contactless process. Stories are then printed on a receipt-like piece of paper. Since the installation in January 2020, more than 14,000 short stories have been printed by the two dispensers.

The SPL-sponsored dispensers are the first and only located in Washington state, according to machine maker Short Edition's website. Short Edition created the machines in 2016 to offer people unexpected literary moments in their daily lives. More than 300 dispensers have been installed around the world and in unexpected places, such as airports, train stations and museums. Writers can submit stories for consideration on Short Edition's website.

Can a story that takes just a few minutes to read pack a punch? Can it reach the heart and bring the reader into another world? The answer to all those questions is yes. We are grateful to Seattle-based award-winning writer Jennifer Fliss for allowing us to offer one of her short stories featured in SPL's dispensers here:

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By Jennifer Fliss

Jennifer Fliss’ work has appeared in F(r)iction, The Rumpus, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Her flash collection, The Predatory Animal Ball, was published in 2021. Her story collection As If She Had a Say will be published by Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books in 2023. She can be found on Twitter at @writesforlife or via her website, jenniferflisscreative.com.

More at Seattle's Child:

"SPL expands hours at most branches in spring 2023"