When we first conceived Fawlt Magazine, before it had a name, we agreed that each issue would orbit around a common theme. First considering geography (Manhattan stories in the first issue, mountain man adventures in the second), we moved on to more intangible possibilities (major philosophies, deadly sins). Eventually we came to human flaws, which we all understood more than needs to be discussed here.

         In choosing the faults for each issue, we decided on ones that surface in a wide range of situations—from tics that annoy friends to fatal flaws that shake entire civilizations to dust. And in choosing the content for this inaugural issue, we gathered a variety of perspectives and tones, aiming for texture and depth in the collection as a whole.

         In these stories a boy protects his ego with elaborate lies and a girl tries to rescue her sister from madness. A daughter meets secretly with her estranged father while, in a balloon high over the Serengeti, a boy king covets an empire. Our poetry addresses a marriage destined for failure as well as a son trying not to become his father. Whether they are delusional or trying to get by in an unreal world, the characters collected in this issue dance energetically across what David Shields calls, in his essay included here, “the generic line between fact and fiction.”

         Fawlt has been a labor of love—everything from determining content to the graphics to the web design was done in-house by a tiny group of dedicated people—and though we can be a bit delusional, we hope you enjoy reading this first issue as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

    Yours truly,

    Fawlt Magazine