Short stories by Matthew Baker
Named one of Variety’s “10 Storytellers To Watch,” Matthew Baker is the author of the story collections Why Visit America and Hybrid Creatures and the children’s novel Key Of X, originally published as If You Find This. His stories have appeared in publications such as New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, One Story, Electric Literature, and Conjunctions, and anthologies including Best Of The Net and Best American Science Fiction And Fantasy. A recipient of grants and fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, the Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center For The Creative Arts, Blue Mountain Center, Prairie Center Of The Arts, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, he has an MFA from Vanderbilt University, where he was the founding editor of Nashville Review. Born in the Great Lakes region of the United States, he currently lives in New York City.
Listing 15 stories.
A man and a woman converse the morning after a storm.
Real-life tensions of the Ragtag party and their associates color the fantasy setting of fest. Taylor must navigate her feelings through two worlds in parallel as fest reaches its climax.
In an alternative reality where crimes are punished with memory erasure, a man must settle back into the old life he does not remember as he tries to piece together what crime he committed.
Everything all at once in word form.
Three brothers, abandoned by their parents, act out in different ways. When one of the brother's is injured, they must finally find some help from their parents — or maybe some other entity.
As a pandemic sweeps across the nation, a grandmother and her family ration space and food as best they can, until the grandmother makes a discovery that could extend their food stores and repair her broken relationship with her granddaughter.
In 2003, a boy's father disappears leaving him feeling empty and confused. Years later, the son finds a portal and he believes he has found a clue to his father's disappearance, but has to ponder the implications of his discovery.
Aliens visit Earth in the near future to select a single work of art to represent all of humanity, but the artwork they choose shocks the world.
A story with an unconventional structure that asks "What is your number one priority?"
A group of explorers take a traveler to tour a cave where ghosts sing songs forgotten by the living. Upon entering, they realize they underestimated the effect the songs have on the psyche.