Between July 1st, 1907 and June 30th, 1908 there were close to 700-million postcards mailed within the United States - approximately 8 postcards for each person living here. This was the Golden Age of postcards. The low postage cost and improvements in printing technology made postcards a very attractive and cost-effective form of communication.

What we're left with now is thousands-upon-thousands of dusty shoeboxes filled with 25-cent postcards in antique shops across the country. Pieces of peoples' lives - talks of quarantines, wars, sickly mothers, and secret admirers occasionally being shuffled through but often discarded by collectors because they're in "bad shape".

We moved to email. Shaping pixels on a screen with no personality - spell-checks catch our mistakes - communication is instant and free, allowing for meaningful conversation along the lines of:

Jason -
'sup?
- Josh

POSTCARDS wants to bring the postcard back. A 160-page anthology produced and edited by Jason Rodriguez (coedited by James W. Powell), POSTCARDS tells stories inspired by these glimpses at someone's life. Why did the mysterious "E" brave a quarantine to see his friend Elmer? Did Earl Shafer ever return from World War II? Did Anna really marry a man with a 12-year-old son as her cousin suspected? An all-star line-up, including Harvey Pekar, Matt Kindt, Phil Hester, Tom Beland, Stuart Moore, Michael Gaydos, Josh Fialkov, Ande Parks, Rick Spears & Rob G, Robert Tinnell, Neil Kleid, Antony Johnston, and Noel Tuazon, have set out to answer these questions and more.

POSTCARDS is set to be released July 2007, but we can't wait that long to bring the postcard back. We want your postcards. We want a glimpse into your life. If you have something to tell us or tease us with, send a postcard to:

Jason Rodriguez
P.O. Box 17851
Arlington, VA 22201

Include an email address on the card - if something catches our eye we may be asking for permission to post it on the POSTCARDS MySpace page. If something really gets us excited we may even ask for permission to feature it within a future volume of POSTCARDS. Also, feel free to include your return address - you might get a reply postcard from someone in the book.

So pick out some fun postcards and get to writing - purchase some postcard stamps (.24-cents, for those that haven't mailed a postcard within the last couple of decades) - send us a postcard. Send a postcard to your mother or your boyfriend or your friend from college while you're at it. Help us bring the postcard back.