Matthew Simmons has worked at the University Book Store in Seattle, Wash., for more than a decade. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, and his work has appeared in McSweeney's and Monkey Bicycle. Tomorrow, Dark Coast Press will publish his first collection of short stories, called Happy Rock. (The launch party will be held at Richard Hugo House a week from tomorrow, on Tuesday, May 28, which also happens to be Simmons's 40th birthday.)
"I'd always written, but never seriously," said Simmons, who moved to Seattle in 2000. "It wasn't until I worked in a bookstore and spent enough time around authors and writing, and started reading more and more, that I discovered how to take things I'd always written and turn them into stories."
As he delved more deeply into the craft of writing fiction, Simmons began to appreciate stories and novels in another light. He has found the work of Nicholson Baker, especially the novel Mezzanine, "more and more interesting" each time he re-examines it. Mark Richard's short story "Strays," from the collection The Ice at the Bottom of the World, is an object of fascination. "I go back to that all the time. I've sat down and re-typed it."
Simmons also took something of an unusual path to getting an MFA--he did not start his residency at Warren Wilson until 2006, about five years after he began publishing stories. He received his MFA in 2008, and from there returned to the University Book Store. Many of the stories in Happy Rock, in fact, were written in 2008, and a few of them have origins going back as far as 10 years.
"It's been a long process," said Simmons, who makes a point to write every morning before work. "I'll write half of something and then start on something else. And then the rest of the story will present itself to me, and I'll finish it."
The stories in Happy Rock all take place in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where Simmons grew up. Although the stories do not feature recurring characters or intertwining storylines, they are connected by both a fabulist sensibility and a focus on characters who are, in some ways, outsiders.
"I'm interested in how difficult it can be to communicate, to connect with people," explained Simmons. "People often talk to each other without a lot of success. A lot of the characters in Happy Rock are connected in that way. It's difficult to get your point across; writing is one of the ways that I try to do that."
Simmons, in his own words, came to reading late. His interest was piqued by choose-your-own-adventure books, then he moved on to novels based on the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, and from there to the stories of Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's work led him to the Beats, and the Beats to William S. Burroughs.
Since then, his knowledge of books has continued to expand. Asked about authors that he admires in particular, Simmons offered up a long list, including Amy Hempel, Matt Bell, Ben Marcus, Amy Bender and Sam Lipsyte, along with Baker and Richard, before stopping to reflect. "You work long enough at a bookstore and you suddenly find you have 40 favorites," he said. "There are so many books, and so many of them are so great." --Alex Mutter
