So, it’s Friday. (Friday. Gotta get down on Friday.)
Twitter has a Follow Friday “tradition” where you list the people you follow who have the most interesting, useful, funny, or otherwise engaging Tweets, so your friends can follow that person, too. It is a sort of mini-endorsement, if you will, and it is an interesting way to help others broaden their networks and spheres of influence.
In the spirit of Follow Friday, I thought I might highlight some online friends and folks who I find to be engaging and inspirational. Many will be writers (some I know personally, some only online, some–even–not at all) but I’ll probably throw in some folks from other areas of life.
I thought I’d start with Matt Bell. Matt and I really don’t know each other. We’ve exchanged comments on Facebook a few times. I’ve read his book, How They Were Found, and we are “friends” on Facebook. I try to check out his blog and see what he has going on and it’s always good to drop by the on-line literary magazine he edits, The Collagist. He’s been featured in Best American Mystery Stories 2010, Best American Fantasy 2008, & the Re:Telling anthology edited by William Walsh. His stories have appeared in Conjunctions, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Gulf Coast,Willow Springs, Unsaid, and American Short Fiction (which is where I first saw his work) and he has FOUR chapbooks of stories published. Matt has a whole list of awards and honors on his website for you to check out, if you are into that sort of thing, and he is the series editor for Dzanc Book’s Best of the Web anthology.
Regardless of all that, here is what you need to know: Matt is an excellent writer, a teacher of writing who is full of passion for helping others, and an editor who gets excited about helping shed light on good writing. What more do you want from a fellow word lover?
Check out Matt Bell in any of these formats:
Matt has three items at Amazon.com:
How They Were Found(collection, paperback or eBook) A Long Walk, With Only Chalk to Mark the Way (single story, for eReaders) A Tree or a Person or a Wall (single story, for eReaders)
Also, Amazon links to: