About

Matt Bell is the author of a forthcoming fiction collection, How They Were Found (Keyhole, Fall 2010), as well as a novella, The Collectors, and a chapbook, How the Broken Lead the Blind. His fiction has appeared or is upcoming in magazines such as Conjunctions, Willow Springs, Unsaid, American Short Fiction, Redivider, Gulf Coast, Caketrain, Hayden's Ferry Review, Hobart, Barrelhouse, Monkeybicycle, and Gargoyle.

He is also the editor of The Collagist and the series editor of Dzanc's Best of the Web anthology series.

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

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The Collectors

How the Broken Lead the Blind

How They Were Found
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A new literary magazine published by Dzanc Books, edited by Matt Bell with Poetry Editor Matthew Olzmann. Now available at www.thecollagist.com.

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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"
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Tuesday
08Apr2008

Kim Chinquee's Oh Baby

m_4d19d97135c80511b386688408b4c54b.jpgKim Chinquee's collection Oh Baby is packed with very short, very lean flash fictions and prose poems, each work lacking the unmistakable fat that accompanies the digression and tangents of other writers while still retaining just enough weight to knock the reader out with her punchy ending lines and sharp observations. 

One of the finest stories in the collection is titled "History" (originally published in elimae), and at just over a page is still one of her longer stories.  More narrative than some of the other works in Oh Baby, "History" tells the story a young mother and military lab technician stationed in England at the same base her husband once worked:

I heard stuff, found stuff, ran into women on base and I wondered how he knew them. They laughed and giggled, wearing no bras and thin shirts. I tried to concentrate on work and on my baby. When my boy laughed, he laughed like his father. At work, I found old charts with his initials: documentations, daily checks, temperatures and values.

Now everyone was sick. It was sinuses and viruses. When I didn't have lab work, I checked in patients. I penetrated people's histories. People will tell you anything. 

Stories like "History" reveal Chinquee's greatest gift as a writer, namely the ability to cut away every extraneous detail from a story, until all that is left are the most necessary words, until each remaining detail is a landmark in the life of a characters, leading us to the moment where characters reveal themselves as who they really are, who they might one day become.   Over and over, Chinquee crams heartbreak and reconciliation into the small spaces between her spare sentences, laying down associations that will challenge the reader to mentally follow her leaps from phrase to phrase, all the while promising that what is on the other side is worth the effort.   Luckily, Oh Baby delivers on these promises again and again.  This is an impressive debut collection by one of flash fiction's most prolific and talented practitioners, and shouldn't be missed. 

 

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Reader Comments (2)

Ditto, Matt. This book is a fantastic read and will be a fantastic reread (i'm really glad I don't have to return it to the library)

April 8, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterS. Garson

I'm glad you enjoyed it too, Scott-- I feel like there's a lot of people out there reading this, and I hope it continues to get the attention it deserves.

April 8, 2008 | Registered CommenterMatt Bell

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