Laura Sewell Matter's Blog

• The Mosquitoes in the Grave

  January 23, 2009

  • Just a few weeks after I submitted my latest essay, "The Crab in the Stars," to the journal Brevity, and a few weeks before I received the editor's response accepting it for inclusion in Issue 29, my grandmother died.  Though not entirely unexpected, the timing of her passing seemed uncanny to me, because the essay was about the death of my grandfather (her husband) when I was twelve, ...
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• The Per Capita Capital of the World

  January 21, 2008

  • Q. Which country has produced the most Nobel Prize winners in Literature per capita ? A. Iceland. They've produced exactly one (Halldor Laxness, 1955) but with a population of just over 300,000 according to the most recent estimates, they've got about half as many people as my present home town of Albuquerque, New Mexico (America's 33rd largest city), which gives them a real strategic advantage ...
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• Who?

  January 17, 2008

  • Let me guess. You're here because you were browsing the Red Room author list and you saw my name and thought "never heard of her, who is she?"--or else you tried to click on Norman Mailer and you missed. Oh well. Welcome, stranger. To answer your question: I am an author whose publication history, as of six months ago, consisted of one sonnet about flossing (yes teeth), which ...
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