Screenshot from a spot by the French news channel M6

Last week Konbini, the online magazine dedicated to popular culture, featured a short story (the nonfiction kind) on the French city of Grenoble, so-called capital of the French Alps. In a collaboration between the city council and the French publishing company Short Édition, certain public spaces that frequently feature waiting time–libraries, the post office, the tourist center–have been equipped with short story dispensers.

After pressing a button to select between one-, three-, and five-minute stories, a long strip of paper is printed from the kiosk and the user can enjoy a piece of short fiction from Short Édition’s community-based literature collection, where author-submitted stories are edited by the publishing company’s online user/members (over 9000 authors have been published already since 2011).

Short Édition also publishes poems, micro-novels (which take about 20 minutes to read), and small cartoon strips, which users can read online, via an app, or listen to in the form of podcasts–if they don’t happen to be waiting in line somewhere in Grenoble. The community literature platform’s goal is to reinvent popular literature with full reader input (members vote on material) and provide Francophones with something (and I’m translating here):

To battle the little moments of boredom and waiting in daily life. At work, on the bus or subway, in the doctor’s waiting room, in line at the supermarket, or in a tree. And even in the bathroom.

Click here for the Short Édition website (in French), or here for the original Konbini article.