In 1997, Francis Ford Coppola launched Zoetrope: All-Story, a quarterly magazine devoted to the best new short fiction and one-act plays. It has received every major story award, including the National Magazine Award for Fiction, while publishing today's most promising and significant writers: Mary Gaitskill, David Mamet, Ha Jin, Elizabeth McCracken, Yiyun Li, Don DeLillo, Andrew Sean Greer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Woody Allen, Yoko Ogawa, David Means, Susan Straight, Charles D'Ambrosio, David Bezmozgis, Neil Jordan, and Haruki Murakami among them.

Along with new stories, each edition of the magazine presents a Classic Reprint—a previously published short story that inspired a great film—to illustrate the narrative relationship between the art forms. Previous Classic Reprints include Liu Yi-chang's "Intersection" (which inspired Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love), Steven Millhauser's "Eisenheim the Illusionist" (Neil Burger's The Illusionist), Alice Munro's "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" (Sarah Polley's Away From Her), and Paul Auster's "Auggie Wren's Christmas Story" (Wayne Wang's Smoke).

Zoetrope: All-Story is also an art magazine, as the editors invite a different contemporary artist to illustrate and design each issue. Past guest designers include William Eggleston, Zaha Hadid, Julian Schnabel, Wim Wenders, Laurie Anderson, Peter Sellars, Helmut Newton, David Bowie, Gus Van Sant, Tom Waits, Ed Ruscha, David Byrne, Kiki Smith, Wayne Thiebaud, Chip Kidd, Yves Béhar, and Mike Figgis.