The magazine’s website explains: “It’s an old story, we figured. Someone, in a bar somewhere, scribbling on a napkin in the failing afternoon light; the kind of story or list or note that might be crammed in a pocket and pulled out years later to tell something deep and forgotten — perhaps life’s most intimate first chapter, nearly lost forever. So we gave this spontaneous medium a shot. We put 250 napkins in the mail to writers from all over the country — some with a half dozen books to their name, others just finishing their first. In return, we got nearly a hundred stories.”

A sampling:

• T. Jefferson Parker (I’m a California boy in New York for the first time…)

• Andrew Sean Greer (The cold pressure you feel under the table is a gun. A real gun. I am a desperate man. I am a novelist. Don’t look at me, just keep on drinking…)

• J.R. Moehringer (“Why not give online dating a try,” Jenny + Heather said, those idiots, + so now here I am…).

• More napkin prose here.

[Thanks TEV]