This morning marked the debut of a new online literary magazine, Lost, edited by John Parsley in the moments he could spare around his day job at Thomas Dunne Books (and when he wasn't writing for places like Salon and McSweeney's). "We want to be a home to both published writers and folks who simply have a great story of loss to share," Parsley says of the magazine's editorial mission, which is broad enough to include Benjamin Hart's memories of the day McDonalds excised the Chicken Select from its menu as well as Tom Bissell's account of a journey to Vietnam with his veteran father (if that sounds familiar, Bissell wrote about a different part of that trip in the December 2004 Harper's and is currently working on a book about it as well).

"The focus itself probably has a lot to do with abandoned landscapes I've observed in my life," Parsley mused in response to a battery of e-mail questions, "from the falling-down barns of upstate New York to the rapidly-changing streets here in New York City. I think we're a culture infatuated with forward motion and that we often view the mechanisms of wrecking and rebuilding as indicators of success and progress. We're trying to answer that with Lost; we're going back to the people, places, and things that have fallen victim, for better or for worse, to ourselves." Now that the site is live, and so is the blog, Parsley and company are reading through to pick out stories for the next issue and, maybe down the road, schedule a reading featuring contributors. And while you're waiting for next month's issue to arrive, you can pass the time by visiting the site's classified section, where people will be able to post short notices about the things they've lost.