Here are two things I like a lot about FRiGG, which is edited by Ellen Parker:

1) It always looks amazingly ornate. Each issue flings these full color graphics at you for every author’s page. I think this is a smart way to be an online magazine in a different way than we normally imagine. Normally we think online lends itself to streamlined, simple, a few solid colors. Sure, that makes sense. But FRiGG’s approach also makes sense because you couldn’t do this lavish kind of stuff in print; it would be too expensive, right? Yes. And then the paintings are smart enough to recede into the background for the text, which is just a very simple black on white. I feel like there is a curator’s sense of individual-by-individual care that goes into presenting all the authors, and that’s great.

2) FRiGG seems aware that people don’t usually want to read 2000+ word stories on the Web, but they publish some anyway, and usually the ones they publish seem smart in their length: broken up cleverly or chasing you with enough line-by-line momentum that you forget the idea of eye strain and read the whole thing. I think this is terrific editorial shrewdness.

All of which is to introduce FRiGG’s new issue, which features stories and poems from: Joshua Ben-Noah Carlson, Louie Crew, Barry Graham, Crystal J. Hoffman, Tiff Holland, Paul Hostovsky, Dennis Mahagin, Ravi Mangla, Mary Miller, Suzanne Ondrus, Jennifer Pieroni, and Katy Whittingham. Peek it now.