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
The Collagist

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

Published Fiction
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Currently Reading...
  • Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir
    Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir
    by Ander Monson
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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
01Dec2009

The pockmarked surface of the I

Each I encountered is a mouth that we are swallowed in. It's okay to be consumed in another's brain as long as we can cast it off eventually, a wig, a borrowed coat, a Halloween costume. I have been thinking about the self, about consciousness. About our ways of trying to represent consciousness: first-person narration, stream of consciousness, memoir, compulsive neurotic footnoting and increasing annotations, essay after essay after essay. They are beautiful and necessary. They are problems waiting to be solved. According to a 2009 study conducted by Nicole Speer and Jeffrey M. Zacks, when the brain reads a narrative text, it actually simulates what is described, and reruns the simulation as the story situation changes. Reading is not a passive act; we are simulating another. Anyone who reads a lot knows this already. We try on selves, run simulation programs, enter into magic. The act should not be treated lightly.

--from Vanishing Point by Ander Monson, forthcoming from Graywolf Press

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