literary fiction Missy Matchstick literary fiction Missy Matchstick

Shark / Skull

Among shark teeth, bones, and objects pulled from the sea, two people begin to understand each other without needing to explain what they’ve survived. Some things are lost, some are remade, and some find their way back anyway.

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literary fiction Missy Matchstick literary fiction Missy Matchstick

Where She Goes, I Go

A woman on the verge of disappearing and the dog who refuses to let her do it alone move together through the slow wreckage of burnout. What emerges is a tender, clear-eyed story about love without language and the courage to go.

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literary fiction Missy Matchstick literary fiction Missy Matchstick

San Quentin’s Hidden Library

A prison yard splits around two storytellers, one who offers wings and one who offers wounds. But as their voices start to braid together, the women listening discover that survival may require both the fantasy of freedom and the truth of what was lost.

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literary fiction Missy Matchstick literary fiction Missy Matchstick

Redwood Crown, Lithium Bones

In the aftermath of a manic break that felt more like revelation than illness, a woman struggles to survive the soft violence of being stabilized. As she moves through recovery, exile, and collapse, she must decide whether the wild self she became in the forest was something to escape or something worth carrying home.

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literary fiction Missy Matchstick literary fiction Missy Matchstick

Stick With Me, Please

When a series of anonymous notes begins appearing across Los Angeles, each one reaches someone at the exact moment they are about to give up. What unfolds is not a miracle, but something smaller and more human—the possibility that even unseen, we are still holding each other in place.

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Writing The California Fever Dream

 

“Outside, the sky began changing colors like it was unsure which version of the sunset to run. A Joshua Tree caught fire, silently. Beautifully. And then reassembled itself in reverse.”

Static at the edge of 29 Palms

“She could taste the day. Hot pennies. Sunscreen. The faint chemical sweetness of melted plastic… She told herself this was normal. California normal. A climate that didn’t ask permission.”

What California Makes

“The heat was biblical and immediate. By the time she had crossed the wash and climbed the low rise beyond it, her shirt was sticking to her back and her thoughts had gone strangely bright around the edges.”

Roofline Blonde