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: April 4, 2022
A socially awkward tech worker grapples with his impending divorce, his relationship with his young son, and his struggle to create human connections in a tech-driven world.
Date: March 17, 2022
Weir’s linked collection of bittersweet, often witty stories elucidates almost 50 years in the life of a gay White man in the U.S., from enduring school taunts in 1970s New […]
Date: March 1, 2022
The cover art of Thea Prieto’s debut novella coupled with its title, From the Caves, invited this reviewer immediately to consider Plato’s famed Allegory of the Cave. Plato’s fire, however, […]
Date: February 22, 2022
Readers and writers in Alaska and beyond are grieving the loss of Frank Soos, a beloved emeritus professor from the University of Alaska and Alaska’s Writer Laureate from 2014-16, who […]
Date: February 15, 2022
In Sadie Hoagland’s debut novel, Strange Children, eight young narrators struggle to navigate two very different worlds. Some are exiled to the lurid, modern American city, with its microwave dinners, senseless […]
Date: February 3, 2022
We are taught that a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We are taught that a girl who ventures on a quest to find her lost parents […]
Date: February 1, 2022
Deadheading, the practice of pruning dead flower heads in order to preserve the plant, provides Beth Gilstrap with a rich metaphor around which to organize her new story collection. The […]
Date: January 24, 2022
DIANE THIEL’S WORK has always asked fundamental and human questions. Janet Holmes, reviewing Thiel’s first book, Echolocations, notes that Thiel’s work deals with “silences, evasions, loss, and omissions.” This third […]
Date: January 18, 2022
In a word, wow! We know how it ends and yet we still find it mesmerizing. We know she kills all four of her children but we read on to […]
Date: January 11, 2022
Weir (The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket) returns with a searing collection of stories about death from the perspective of a gay man who survived the AIDS epidemic. The unnamed […]