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Sep 20, 2025 Chinaza James-Ibe

LEAN Magazine is dedicated to non-protagonist-centered fiction, a literary approach that deemphasizes the main character. Instead of centering a protagonist, this form withdraws narrative attention from them, opening space for unusual perspectives, collective experiences, and alternative ways of knowing.

This act of reduction animates works such as Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, Natalia Ginzburg’s Voices in the Evening, and Hiroko Oyamada’s The Factory. Though rare in literary history, non-protagonist-centered fiction offers a rich field for experimentation, generating narratives that reflect large forces, social structures, and environments rather than focusing narrowly on individuals.

LEAN explores how individuals are absorbed into and diminished by broader events, enormous timescales, crowds, or immediate surroundings. While not anti-human or posthuman, the magazine resists neoliberal notions of the isolated self, seeking instead to dramatize literature’s engagement with the world at scale.