Books by Matt Briggs

Shoot the Buffalo Publication date: December 2005 Press: Clear Cut Press (out of print) Press: Publication Studio Portland Format: Paperback Language: English ISBN: 0972323473 Buy Publication Studio Dzanc eBook Winner of the American Book Award, 2006 Nominated for a Washington State Book Award, 2006 Synopsis The summer Aldous Bohm turns nine, his parents move to the woods near Snoqualmie, Washington, “to reinvent the American family.” The Bohm’s are working class hippies in post-Vietnam America. Their makeshift pastoral takes shape in a haze of pot smoke and good intentions and ultimately births a vortex of personal insecurity and romanticism taking the family deeper into the woods to destroy them. Aldous oversees these tragedies, recalled a decade later, after he has left Snoqualmie to join the military in the buildup to the first Gulf War. Sweeping in scope yet unerringly precise in its detail, Shoot the Buffalo conjoins the dead end narrative of American masculinity with its stubborn twin - the Romantic ideal of nature - to suggest an ambivalent way forward, a path out of these woods. ...

Author/Editor: Ava Chin Publication date: June 2002 Press: McGraw-Hill Format: Paperback Language: English ISBN: 0071391061 Buy Synopsis An anthology of intimate personal accounts by hip young journalists and writers in their 20s and 30s, Split will be a source of insight, comfort, and healing for all those who were children of divorce. High-profile Gen X writers who have contributed to this volume include Paula Gilovich, Jill Priluck, Ayana Byrd, Matt Briggs, and Jen Robinson. Like a support group between the covers of a book, this collection of 15 stories articulates some of the most difficult emotional aspects of growing up in a broken home, while providing hope for the future. ...

The Moss Gatherers Publication date: March 2005 Press: StringTown Press Format: Paperback Language: English ISBN: 0971896739 Buy Synopsis A sense of the bizarre unique to the Northwest runs through the stories in Moss Gatherers: a French cyclist is murdered by supposed “moss gatherers” in costal Oregon; a child has fungus growing on his forehead; and an old woman wearing a crown of lit candles plays a Victrola in a cornfield. The stories are infused with a sense of decay and stagnancy lit by surprising flickers of human decency, however small: a young girl plays boogie-woogie at her brother’s wedding, and her family dances; an old woman tries to comfort a grieving teenager; and a woman preoccupied with safety leaves her front door wide open one night for the sake of a lost bird. Through these stories, we realize that the bizarre is always at the periphery of our otherwise mundane lives, and when we meet it, we are offered the chance to be forever changed. ...

The Remains of River Names Publication date: September 1999 Press: Black Heron Press Format: Hardcover Language: English ISBN: 978-0930773564 Buy Black Heron Press Dzanc eBook Winner of the King County Arts Commission Publication Prize, 1998 Synopsis Briggs’ novel opens with Artie and Janice Graham, former hippies, fleeing as the police close in on their marijuana farm. They show little remorse at leaving their two school-aged sons behind to fend for themselves. These former flower children possess no ideals or purpose and live for the moment through the fifteen-year span of the novel, while their children, trapped in a cycle of selfishness, become isolated and antisocial. As adults, they separately commit assault, drunk driving, and attempted rape. ...

Publication date: January 2010 Press: Publication Studio Portland Format: Paperback Language: English ISBN: 9780615332918 Buy Publication Studio Dzanc eBook Synopsis An Army Reservist, Ben Wallace, is a reluctant member of the U.S. Army Reserve. Yet, when he is called to duty in Operation Desert Shield, he realizes he wants to experience what his grandfather calls, “The Enlightenment of War.” He initially joined the Army as a form of rebellion against his father—a Vietnam era draft dodger—and as a way to be closer to his grandfather. His grandfather is a veteran of Guam. Wallace needs to experience combat, he thinks, to make himself a man. ...

Publication date: March 2013 Press: Publication Studio Portland Format: Paperback Language: English ISBN: 1624620663 Buy Publication Studio Paperback Synopsis Virility Rituals of North American Teenage Boys tells stories set at the boundary between real men and boys in man drag. In the title story, a man tells the various myths associated with his manhood from the Breakfast Club inspired obsession with “Elephantitis of the nuts” to an unexpected bodily testing sequence executed under the fluorescent glare of middle school lights. The characters in the fourteen stories live in the shadow of a failed macho culture. These stories have appeared in Birkensnake, The Chicago Review, Filter Magazine, MonkeyBicycle, Roethke Readings, Spork, and TRNSF Magazine. The Review of Contemporary Fiction wrote of Briggs’ stories, “As with the songs, the stories are all about life out of kilter, told with charm from the perspective of the odd as norm, not so much magical realism than delightfully pernicious absurdity.” ...