Short stories by Brendan Matthews

Brendan Mathews is the author of This Is Not a Love Song and The World of Tomorrow, both published by Little, Brown and Co. This Is Not a Love Song has been longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Awards and shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. The World of Tomorrow was named an Honor Book by the Massachusetts Book Awards and longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. It was also named an Indie Next Great Read and an Editors' Choice by the New York Times Book Review. A Fulbright Scholar to Ireland, Brendan’s fiction has twice appeared in The Best American Short Stories and in Glimmer Train, Virginia Quarterly Review, Salon, Cincinnati Review, and other publications in the US and UK. He has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Sewanee Writers Conference. Born and raised in upstate New York, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received his MFA from the University of Virginia. He lives with his wife and their four children in Lenox, Massachusetts, and teaches at Bard College at Simon’s Rock.

Listing 2 stories.

A circus clown in unrequited love with the girl on the flying trapeze attempts to explain how he ended up onstage, pantless and pelted with trash, while lions ate the flying trapeze girl's lover.

A photographer grapples with the meaning of her own work and life after the untimely death of a female musician friend, whom she had documented from her high school years in 1990s Chicago through her adult life of performances, drugs, and rocky relationships.