DO NOT REMOVE
by Alyssa Walker
[Editor’s Note: Click on the image below to view it at full size.]
Alyssa Walker is a writer and teacher. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and two children. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Huffpost and many other publications. She’s working on her first novel. Check out her website, alyssamwalker.com, or follow her on Twitter at @lysmank.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “DO NOT REMOVE”? I wrote DO NOT REMOVE in Kathy Fish’s incredible Fast Flash workshop in November. It was the hermit crab exercise and I was terrified, both of the form and of story I knew I wanted to tell — it had been brewing for a long time. So I did what I always do when I’m terrified: I went to lie down. When my head crunched against the pillow tag underneath the pillow case, it hit me: put this hard story in the softest place you can find, with a warning. I wrote lots of versions and like this one best.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now open. The reading period for standard submissions closes again December 15, 2022. Submit here.
Upcoming
03/20 • Claire Polders
03/27 • Beth Cleary
04/03 • Gargi Mehra
04/10 • Tina Wang
04/17 • Juliana Rappaport
04/24 • TBD