Upcoming Readings for The End is the Beginning

finalstateadmin — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:12:10 +0000

March 16, 2009 :: Smallpressapalooza 2009

Monday March 16th, 2009 at 6:30 PM

Powell’s World of Books, Portland, Oregon

Powell’s celebrates Small Press Month with its 2nd five-hour marathon small press extravaganza in Portland on Monday March 16th from 5-10 p.m. at Powell’s City of Books on Burnside (1005 W Burnside 800.878.7323). There will be food, books, readings, and other things… including: Starlite Motel, Zachary Schombur, Tim Sproul, Ronault LS Catalani AKA Polo, Emiko Badillo, Moe Bowstern, Karen Giezyng, Lia Cunningham, Molly McNett, Benjamin Parzybok, Samuel Ligon, Jeff Stewart, Michael Parker, and Matt Briggs. Briggs will be reading from The End is the Beginning at at 6:30.

June 4th, 2009 :: Who’s On First

Thursday June 4th, 2009, at 7 P.M.

Arundel Books, Seattle, Washington

Matt Briggs will read from The End is the Beginning at the Arundel Books (1001 First Ave in Seattle) reading series, “Who’s On First” on the first Thursday of April 2008.

New Title Published

finalstateadmin — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:52:30 +0000

Final State Press announces the release of The End is the Beginning, a new collection of short stories by Matt Briggs.

From: The End is the Beginning:

My mailbox was flattened that October, not like mailbox baseball, but flattened like a steamroller had passed over the metal post, leaving it crushed into the clover and gravel growing in the no man’s land between the curb and the fence edging my yard.

My first thought was that I had enemies that I didn’t know about. The enemies lurked in front of their plasma TV screens with the curtains drawn. Only the faint blue light leaked out at the edges of their drapes. I lived near a highway that is often described in the local media as “an abandoned strip of highway.”

The End is the Beginning is a collection of fourteen short stories. These stories have appeared in magazines such as The Wandering Hermit Review, Semantikon, Seattle Magazine, Slouch Magazine, Mississippi Mud, The Mississippi Review, The Jack Straw Anthology, The Clackamas Literary Review, First Intensity, The Raven Chronicles, Smokelong Quarterly, and The Steel City Review.

You can:

Preview the book online at Google Books
Order the book from Amazon.com or Powell’s (print only)
Order directly from Lulu.com (print and ebook)

From the author:

I’ve been writing this book since 1998. This is the first book I’ve published with Final State, but they plan on releasing a novel next year, The Double E, and hopefully more books after that. I wrote many of the stories for reading series and events around the Pacific Northwest, including the Brontesaurus, a day long celebration of the Brontes at Richard Hugo House, a writing resource center in Seattle, back when Rebbecca Brown was the Writer in Residence there. Although it was, one of the first I wrote in this collection; it wasn’t published until last year in The Clackamas Literary Review. Most of the stories are about the end of the world, death destruction, and other light subjects. I wrote one story, called “Caffeinism” after I suffered a serious reaction to an overdose of caffeine. I wrote another about the day I was activated for the first Gulf War. And another is about the end of reading.

You can purchase the book at Amazon, Powells, or Lulu.com (where you can get it either as paper or PDF). If you are interested in reviewing the book, contact Final State Press.