The Collectors

  • Caketrain (May 2009)
  • 2008 Caketrain Fiction Chapbook Contest Runner-Up, judged by Brian Evenson
  • Sold out!
How the Broken Lead the Blind

How They Were Found
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Currently Reading...
  • Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
    Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
    by Cormac McCarthy
Anthologies
Awards and Recognitions
  • 2009 Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions Selection, for "This Showroom Filled With Fabulous Prizes"
  • 2009 Dzanc Best of the Web Notable Story, for "The Folk Singer Dreams of Time Machines"
  • 2008 Caketrain Fiction Chapbook Contest Runner-Up, for The Collectors
  • 2008 Keyhole Fiction Chapbook Contest Finalist, for The Collectors
  • 2008 Million Writers Award Winner, for "Alex Trebek Never Eats Fried Chicken"
  • 2008 Dzanc Best of the Web Notable Story, for "Alex Trebek Never Eats Fried Chicken"
  • 2008 Pushcart Prize Nomination for "The Folk Singer Dreams of Time Machines"
  • 2008 Pushcart Prize Nomination for "Ken Sent Me: Lost in the Land of the Lounge Lizards"
  • 2007 Storyglossia Fiction Prize Finalist, for "Alex Trebek Never Eats Fried Chicken"
  • 2007 Pushcart Prize Nomination for "A Certain Number of Bedrooms, a Certain Number of Baths"
  • 2006 Pushcart Prize Nomination for "The Present"
  • 2006 Pushcart Prize Nomination for "White Lines and Headlights"
  • 2006 Pushcart Prize Nomination for "Rosemary Blooming"
Bio

Matt Bell is the author of two chapbooks, The Collectors and How the Broken Lead the Blind, and a forthcoming fiction collection, How They Were Found, which will be published by Keyhole in the fall of 2010. His fiction has appeared or is upcoming in magazines such as Conjunctions, Meridian, Gulf Coast, Caketrain, Hayden's Ferry Review, Hobart, Barrelhouse, Monkeybicycle, and Keyhole.

He is also the editor of The Collagist and a member of the Dzanc Writer in Residence Program.

He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and can be reached via e-mail at mdbell79@gmail.com.

The Collagist

A new literary magazine coming from Dzanc Books in August 2009, edited by Matt Bell with Poetry Editor Matthew Olzmann. Now open for submissions at www.thecollagist.com.

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Thursday
20Jul

Hobart #6: "Pregnant" by Catherine Zeidler

The nameless protagonists of Catherine Zeidler's "Pregnant" meet beneath a burned out streetlight on the Brooklyn Bridge, an ominous beginning to a relationship that's eventually characterized by drunken delusions and hallucinatory co-dependence.  Zeidler's language is full of strong imagery that evokes a nervous paranoia in the reader, her sentences building dread a word at a time, full of misunderstanding and hurt.  The narrator describes her lover as he "laughs like a ship burning" and how during sex he "huddles his head between my legs and kisses me as if I could kiss back down there," making him more beautiful even as he becomes more and more brutally loving.  Her life is quickly consumed by this man she's brought home, both figuratively and literally, as their sex leads to almost animalistic violence:

He has bitten my fingers down so much that they are all blood and holes.  He has peeled my nails mostly off with his teeth.  I can't touch anything without it digging into raw flesh.  When they grow back they will be rough and strained and then I don't know who I'll be.

Eventually, the man becomes convinced he's pregnant, feeding the baby in his belly the narrator's hair and skin, trading her life for his imagined baby's.  As his foraging for fetal nourishment ravages her body, the narrator swings further into his power, leading finally to a powerful ending that both confirms and denies the worst of what's come before.  "Pregnant" is, without question, a severely bleak story, but it's also a beautiful one.  Whatever the quality of the love between the characters, there's no doubt in my mind that it is in fact love, something the narrator celebrates even as it threatens to destroy her.

"Pregnant" is Catherine Zeidler's first published story, and it's easily one of the strongest short stories I've read lately.   I'll be looking forward to reading more of her work in the future

Read Catherine Zeidler's "Pregnant" in Hobart #6.

Bonus materials at the Hobart Website: "Sketches"

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