About me
I grew up near Detroit and went to school at Michigan State, where I studied economics and co-founded a literary magazine called Oats. Between 2002 and 2012, I worked at Poynter, Current TV, and Twitter, and at all those places, my job had something to do with figuring out the future of media.
I’m the author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, which started as a short story right here and is now a full-length novel from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
I believe that stories told primarily (but not exclusively) with words are among the most durable things a person can produce, and I’m trying my best to write a few that might make it through to the year 2112. If you read one and pass it along to someone else, you’re participating in that project—so, thank you!
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Most of my public conversations happen on Twitter, and it makes my day when people say hello and mention that they’ve read something here.
I send longer ruminations and sneak peeks to my email list. The messages aren’t too frequent and people seem to like them. Please consider joining up.
Want to get in touch? Reach me here: robinsloan at robinsloan dot com
I love to join book clubs and classrooms via FaceTime or Skype. If you are a member of either, don’t hesitate to get in touch. I mean, hey, we live in the future… might as well take advantage of it!
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What’s a media inventor, anyway? I think it’s someone primarily interested in content—words, pictures, ideas—who also experiments with new formats, new tools, and new technology. Allen Lane was a media inventor. Early bloggers were media inventors. The indie video game scene is full of media inventors.
Media inventors aren’t satisfied with the suite of formats available to them by default. Novel, novella, or short story; album, EP, or single; RPG, RTS, or FPS—media inventors don’t like those options.
Media inventors feel compelled to make the content and the container.
If this sounds familiar, I invite you to use the label, too. And more generally, I’m on a mission to bring back the word inventor with all its connotations: protean lightning-crackle and occasional crackpot-itude alike.