Globe-spanning journalist, writer and teacher Robert Masterson reads
solo and in collaboration with editor/photographer and fellow prose and verse
writer Doug Mathewson tomorrow night at Curley’s Diner.
A professor of
English at City University of New York’s Borough of Manhattan Community
College, Robert has placed work in numerous print and online publications and
holds degrees from the
University of New Mexico, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in
Boulder
and the Shaanxi Normal
University, the People’s Republic of China.
In Trial by Water (Dog
Running Wild Press, 1982) and Artificial Rats & Electric Cats (Camber Press, 2008).
Robert’s accounts and commentary derived from travels in Japan, India and
elsewhere mix the ordinary with the far-reaching, culled from years of
high-risk award-winning investigative reporting, including New York political
corruption and the frightening aftermath of post-Chernobyl Ukraine, to the
social tumult of China transitioning from communism to a market economy,
ultimately informing the fourteen stories in 2012’s Garish Trouble (Finishing Line Press) on the underestimated branch-point decisions people make in daily life that spawn profound change down the road.
Interestingly, Doug Mathewson’s complementary “true stories from imaginary lives”
often depict people adjusting to new, difficult situations, sometimes following personal setbacks or trauma, as in this moving November 28 posting from last
year on his blog, little2say.org:
Sunday Afternoons
Long time ago, when
I was first back, it was set up that I’d have this studio
apartment near the park. Just use the name “Walt Sizemore” they said, and the
apartment near the park. Just use the name “Walt Sizemore” they said, and the
place was mine. It
was up on the third floor and looked out over a ball field.
On Sundays, during the good weather, there would usually be a softball game.
I’d nurse my hangover and half read the paper, half watch the game.
I was spooky back then about talking to people outside the center, so watching
the game from my balcony was all the socializing I could handle.
On Sundays, during the good weather, there would usually be a softball game.
I’d nurse my hangover and half read the paper, half watch the game.
I was spooky back then about talking to people outside the center, so watching
the game from my balcony was all the socializing I could handle.
Listing Cultural Weekly,
Boston Literary Magazine, Cloud City, the Jersey Devil Press and Rocky Mountain Revival among his credits, Doug has also contributed to the anthology Scabies
and, reflecting his fascination with precision through brevity, is Senior
Editor of Blink-Ink, a quarterly journal devoted to flash fiction of the
fifty-word variety.
Find out more about Doug on
Facebook.
