Whit Burnett

Whit Burnett was an American writer and educator who founded and edited the literary magazine Story. In the 1940s, Story was an important magazine in that it published the first or early works of many writers who went on to become major authors. Not only did Burnett prove to be a valuable literary birddog for new talent, but Story remained a respectable though low-paying alternative for stories rejected by the large-circulation slick magazines published on glossy paper like Collier's or The Saturday Evening Post or the somewhat more prestigious and literary slick magazines such as The New Yorker. While Story paid poorly compared to the slicks and even the pulps and successor digest-sized magazines of its day, it paid better than most of, and had similar cachet to, the university-based and the other independent "little magazines" of its era.