Maitresse: Hitotoki: A narrative map of Paris

I've been waiting to blog about a new baby project of mine, but now that some of the technical details have been worked out I can tell you about it.

While in Tokyo, I attended a meeting of a group of creative types called Pause Talk at Café Pause, run by my Gridskipper colleague Jean Snow, who I told you about back in December. That night I zeroed in on the only other Frenchie (besides N, who came with me), Paul, who told me that in addition to running Tokyo Art Beat, he had a pet project going on the side. When he described it to me, I jumped at the chance to bring it to Paris.

The project is called Hitotoki, an online literary project collecting stories of singular experiences tied to locations in cities worldwide. Sort of like a narrative map of the world. Hitotoki-- which means "little moments" in Japanese-- is a website comprised of short narratives describing pivotal moments of elation, confusion, absurdity, love or grief — or anything in between — inseparably tied to a specific place. Like a Japanese, web-centered take on psychogeography, which, as I've mentioned, is one of my major interests as a writer and critic.

It was first launched in Tokyo in May, and has since expanded to London and New York, with DC and Shaghai in the works. And what do you know-- the founders decided to let me launch it in Paris!

If you're interested in contributing your own little moment, we're currently accepting submissions for the launch.

HOW TO SUBMIT

Head on over to the website (again, that's http://hitotoki.org/) to see what some of the other city pages look like, and to get a sense of what a Hitotoki narrative is. If you think you want to write one and send it to us, submission guidelines can be downloaded here:

http://hitotoki.org/hitotoki_submission_paris.rtf

Send your stories to submissions_paris@hitotoki.org.

IN ENGLISH OR FRENCH?

For the moment we're launching in English, but we hope very soon to have the site up in French. To do this, we need a French editor! We're actively looking for someone, so if you or anyone you know are interested, please contact me.

We are also be looking for translators and photographers to take part in the project.

Please go right ahead and forward this call for submissions to anyone you think might want to take part! And let me know if you have any questions.