THE WILDERNESS author Maurya Simon wrote for Literary Matters!
Date: June 6, 2022
I had two reasons for enrolling in Pitzer College in 1978: to finally complete my B.A. and to study with poet Bert Meyers, whose poetry had knocked me off my […]
Date: June 6, 2022
I had two reasons for enrolling in Pitzer College in 1978: to finally complete my B.A. and to study with poet Bert Meyers, whose poetry had knocked me off my […]
Date: June 6, 2022
Disengaged…a story about my relationship to computers and the internet and social media, and also about my own insecurities with who I am.
Date: June 6, 2022
The first Pride was a riot and this June, our fight persists. This month, we hope you’ll say gay (bi, lesbian, ace, trans, nonbinary, and more) and we’ve got some […]
Date: June 6, 2022
The judge’s remarks: Ned Balbo had this to say about his choice: I’m delighted to select Allison Joseph’s Lexicon as winner of Poetry by the Sea’s Best Book of 2021 […]
Date: June 6, 2022
Today we’d like to introduce you to Kate Gale. Hi Kate, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with […]
Date: June 1, 2022
“The first critical essay I ever wrote was about the movie Dead Poets Society, which came out when I was fourteen. I wasn’t yet writing poetry myself, and I didn’t have any theories about why […]
Date: June 1, 2022
A society is only as healthy as its teachers. Ours, you might say, is in trouble, partly because our teachers often feel underappreciated and unseen. Yet most of us can […]
Date: June 1, 2022
Today’s poem is by Diane Thiel “A misunderstanding of a fresco,a figure with papyrus on the east wall.Someone assumed wrong two centuries ago,but the name remained—the House of the Tragic Poet.
Date: June 1, 2022
Charles Harper Webb, author of Ursula Lake, talks to the podcast, “Poet Runner.”
Date: June 1, 2022
I met Kristen Millares Young at Fort Worden, an Indigenous gathering place taken by the federal government, which installed concrete bunkers in the cliffs overlooking Salish Sea. Decommissioned for military […]
Date: August 7, 2025
This is not a reading book, however, it does encourage children to use their imaginations and “think outside the box.” That skill will help them later in life with critical […]
Date: August 5, 2025
Troubled lives intersect in the Indian Ocean with explosive results in Lutz’s tantalizing follow-up to Born Slippy. Frank Baltimore worked in construction until one of his employees started laundering money and […]
Date: August 4, 2025
A poignant and profoundly relevant examination of society’s safe places. In this essay collection, Kalfopoulou explores the notion of refuge in all its varied facets. “Embedded in the word refugee […]
Date: July 24, 2025
Four stories merge into one in this tale of politics and greed set in the Indian Ocean. No one can trust anyone in this incendiary tale of murder, espionage, and […]
Date: June 30, 2025
Twelve years ago, Andrew Lam, a writer and journalist who left Vietnam as “a plane person” at the end of the Vietnam War at the age of eleven, published Birds of Paradise […]
Date: June 18, 2025
In Stories from the Edges of the Sea, Andrew Lam writes not from the center of trauma but from its quieter afterlives. These are not conventional Vietnamese refugee stories. They emerge […]
Date: June 17, 2025
The stories in The Sea Gives Up the Dead, Molly Olguín’s debut collection, are remarkable for the ways in which they skate between the weird and the mundane, the ordinary and […]
Date: June 12, 2025
In her second poetry collection, Didi Jackson shifts among lyrical strategies, sometimes earthy and elsewhere mystical. An assistant professor at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University, she spends part of the year in […]
Date: May 27, 2025
The relationship between Ceto—a siren who left her sisters and the ocean behind—and her 15-year-old daughter, Naia, is tested when Sirenland, their seaside burlesque attraction, is threatened by the untimely […]
Date: May 22, 2025
In James, Percival Everett’s National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the character James writes, “With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself to here.” By doing […]