Tag: short stories

Bonus Friday Five: Q&A with ‘Night Watch’ author Mathew Goldberg

‘I’m not someone who gets hit with flashes of inspiration, but someone who sits down and works, facing the screen for a set amount of time even if nothing comes from the session.’

Last night, Mathew Goldberg celebrated the release of his award-winning debut collection of short stories, Night Watch, with a release party at Two Friends Bookstore + Cafe in Bentonville, Arkansas. I hope it’s the first of many occasions for Mathew to celebrate this accomplishment. With his book hot off the presses, I wanted to deviate from my usual Friday Five routine to squeeze in a bonus question-and-answer session with this talented writer while this collection is brand new.

Mathew is an associate teaching professor of English at my former employer, Missouri University of Science and Technology, and he was kind enough to send me a galley proof of the book. I can tell you that it’s brilliant and well worth the read. It’s no surprise the collection won the 2025 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction from Willow Springs Books, the publisher of Night Watch.

At Missouri S&T, Mathew teaches creative writing, composition, American literature, and detective fiction. To readers familiar with S&T’s focus on STEM education, Mathew’s duties may sound a bit fish-out-of-water, but his background — he holds a biomedical and electrical engineering degree from Duke as well as an MFA from Arkansas — gives him unusual insights into many of the students in his courses. (There are, of course, English and humanities students at S&T, and no doubt they too are keen to learn from this talented writer and academic.)

Many of the stories in Night Watch first found purchase in magazines like The Atlantic and Shenandoah. His fiction also has earned Pushcart Prize nods and semifinalist spots in contests like the Iron Horse Literary Review Book Prize.

Read on to learn more about Mathew’s perspective on the writing craft, teaching at a STEM-focused university, and advice to his fellow writers. And once you’re done reading, make plans to pick up a copy of Night Watch as soon as you can. (For readers from the St. Louis area, you might want to make plans to catch Mathew’s reading and book signing next month at Left Bank Books in St. Louis. Can’t make it in person? No worries. Left Bank plans to stream the presentation over its YouTube channel.)

Continue reading “Bonus Friday Five: Q&A with ‘Night Watch’ author Mathew Goldberg”

Friday Five: Q&A with MoonLit Getaway founder and editor Brandon Nadeau

‘We are a doom-scrolling alternative. A mixed bag of mixed metaphors where … the only common denominator is quality.’

As I and my fellow Missourians emerge from the vicious grip of a polar vortex from the north, where heartier types deal with these sub-zero temperatures and wind chills more frequently (and where thermometer readings are even lower, thanks to the Celsius scale), it seems fitting that today’s Friday Five highlights the work of a writer from north of the U.S. border, Brandon Nadeau, and the phenomenal literary magazine he launched last fall, MoonLit Getaway.

MoonLit Getaway founder and editor Brandon Nadeau

Brandon is a veteran of the Canadian Army (twice deployed to Afghanistan) originally from northern British Columbia, where he “snowboarded, played guitar in a metal band, and got bad grades in school.” He now lives, writes, and edits in Edmonton, Alberta. He serves as executive editor and fiction editor for MoonLit Getaway, which publishes fiction (including flash), poetry, and visual artwork every two weeks. He and his editorial team also publish book reviews and interviews with featured authors and artists on the website’s blog.

Continue reading “Friday Five: Q&A with MoonLit Getaway founder and editor Brandon Nadeau”