matthewklam.com

Reading at Rutgers

2008-10-17T10:24:00.008-04:00

This is the poster for the reading, with a slight change where my headshot used to be, the same headshot that's right over there, up and to the right, and so it seemed redundant. Anyway, on October 22nd I'll be reading with the beautiful and talented Richard McCann at Rutgers Newark at the Paul Robeson Gallery at 5:30pm

The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction

2008-10-13T16:39:00.003-04:00

Joyce Carol Oates (who seems to be in all my posts these days) selected a story of mine to be included in this fancy volume.

panelists seemed drunk...

2008-10-08T15:58:00.003-04:00

"It was a session so loose, you'd have thought alcohol had helped it along."

2008-08-14T14:24:00.002-04:00

I'll be appearing on a panel titled "The Devil Within" at The New Yorker Festival on October 3 at 7 p.m. I'll be joined by Joyce Carol Oates and Elmore Leonard, and the panel will be moderated by The New Yorker's features editor, Daniel Zalewski. At Ailey Citigroup Theater, at 405 W. 55th St. at Ninth Avenue.

The NEA Big Read

2008-05-04T13:52:00.004-04:00

On tuesday, may 6, I'll be reading with Leslie Pietrzyk at The Arts Club of Washington, 2017 I Street, NW, at 7 p.m.

Free liquor.

Fine Arts Work Center June 15-20

2008-04-19T10:27:00.002-04:00

I'll be teaching for a week at good ole' FAWC....

a profile of RD Jr

2008-04-15T14:35:00.008-04:00

Washington City Paper story

2008-03-27T15:38:00.004-04:00

The Washington City Paper has written a nice piece on a group effort I'm part of to start a writing tutoring center here in DC. You can find the article here.

Paragraph NY

2008-01-09T13:17:00.000-05:00

On Friday, February 1st at 8:30pm, I'm going to be reading with an amazing writer named Nam Le, the author of the forthcoming short story collection The Boat, at Clay, 25 West 14th Street, sponsored by Paragraph, the writer's place on 14th Street.

Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink

2007-11-13T21:58:00.000-05:00

This book has about twelve thousand stories and many cartoons that mention food, all pulled from The New Yorker, going back to the 1920s. There are stories by Woody Allen, Noah Baumbach, Don DeLillo, Janet Malcolm, Steve Martin, M.F.K Fisher and many others. Every story has some food in it. A story of mine with a chicken in it, cooked in a special way, appears here as well. The story is called, "There Should Be A Name For it."

The New Granta Book of the American Short Story

2007-10-26T15:24:00.000-04:00

Richard Ford has edited a second enormous volume of short stories for Granta. A story I wrote a little while back called "Issues I Dealt With In Therapy" is in it, among stories by T.C. Boyle, Sherman Alexie, Nell Freudenberger, Mary Gaitskill, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lorrie Moore, Raymond Carver, Thom Jones, Z.Z. Packer, Tobias Wolff, John Updike, Denis Johnson, John Cheever, Mary Gaitskill, and MANY OTHERS!

reviewed in

Important News Regarding Knut Hamsun's Hair

2007-10-17T13:14:00.000-04:00

My friend Josh sent this photo Knut Hamsum from Knut's childhood home in Norway.

"... saw this picture on his first
desk.. sporting a very Klam-esque haircut..."

It's nuts.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007

2007-06-07T12:05:00.001-04:00

info, buy

"Adina, Astrid, Chipewee, Jasmine," a short story that appeared in The New Yorker, will run in this fine anthology, coming out soon.

tennis piece

2007-05-21T13:54:00.001-04:00

I wrote about Rafael Nadal for GQ in their June issue. It's not online anywhere, unfortunately. This picture above is from Dubai. I don't believe he's playing tennis in this photo, because tennis players don't wear helmets anymore.

reading writer interviews...

2007-05-06T10:16:00.001-04:00

as long as I'm here posting up a storm, this is also a good one, an interview with Lorrie Moore, from

BLVR: You say that that feeling of inadequacy never goes away, that you have to keep on trudging through the rain. What do you do when writing isn’t going so well?

LM: Did I really say “trudging through the rain?” So Rodgers and Hammerstein. It must have been raining when I said that. That’s the kind of clever mind I have. What do I do when writing isn’t going well? Well, I don’t write—which is symptom, cure, and cause. And then sometimes I just tell myself, as I’m writing, “I’ll fix it later.” And sometimes it’s true, I do.

a rambling conversation on story writing

2007-05-06T09:47:00.000-04:00

between Ann Patchett and Elizabeth McCracken, it's from a little while ago and it's all pretty interesting.... click here

AP: Keeping on the whole short story/novel thing, I believe there’s practically no one who is equally good at the short story or the novel. I think Updike is, I think Márquez is. Just about everybody I can think of who write both I can say, well, you know what he really is a better X, she really is better at Y. ...I’m judging Best American this year and I’m reading now tons of short stories and they are all fabulous. I don’t know how in the world I’m going to choose, they are so incredibly good, which made me wonder what’s going on, why is it that there are so many better short stories than there are novels—in my humble opinion—because I’ve always thought that actually it was harder to write a really great short story than it was a novel.

This summer...

2007-03-04T21:36:00.000-05:00

June 10th -- 15th, I'll be at the the writing conference at ...

Then in Provincetown June 24th -- 29th...

and then July 18th -- 29th at...

Two Readings

2006-12-05T17:45:00.000-05:00

I'm reading with a bunch of very fancy writers on Thursday night:

info here

Thursday, December 7 at 7:00 PM: The Writers Studio celebrates its 20th anniversary with readings by Jennifer Egan, Julia Glass, Matthew Klam, Martha McPhee, Carl Dennis, Grace Schulman, Edward Hirsch, and Robert Pinsky at Judson Church, 55 Washington Square South. Suggested donations $5. Reception and book signing follow the reading.

Friday night, please come see Tobias Wolff and Adam Haslett receive the Pen/Malamud Award for short story writing in Washington, DC:

click here for tickets and where to go

And on Saturday night I'm reading at the Fine Arts Work Center, in Provincetown, MA:

if you happen to be in Ptown

NYT Mag story....

2006-11-11T22:20:00.000-05:00

I wrote about these guys. Aren't they funny? The guy on the top, right, Adam, is making one of his funny faces.

I Wrote About Brent Musburger

2006-10-19T17:29:00.000-04:00

In the November GQ Magazine. It would take too long to explain....

A literary festival in Virginia

2006-10-09T11:58:00.000-04:00

October 17th. I'll be wearing my Jewish hat for this event:

Here's Something Beefy

2006-09-08T11:06:00.000-04:00

This is a fascinating interview in the DC Examiner, a newspaper of some reknown.

Stony Brook Southampton Writers Conference

2006-07-25T22:06:00.000-04:00

is happening this week....

Prepare to have your mind completely blown!

Great Interviews

2006-07-12T12:18:00.000-04:00

The Paris Review Writers at Work interviews.

And this is from the P.G. Wodehouse interview, from 1975, which I cracks me up, even though I don't care about the writer too much:

"When I first went to see him, I telephoned P.G. Wodehouse and asked for directions from New York to his house on Long Island. He merely chuckled, as if I had asked him to compare Euclid with Einstein or attempt some other laughably impossible task. “Oh, I can’t tell you that,” he said. “I don’t have a clue.” I learned the route anyway, and my arrival for lunch, only ten minutes late, seemed to astonish him. “You had no trouble? Oh, that is good. That’s wonderful!” His face beaming at having in his house such a certified problem-solver, a junior Jeeves almost, he led me without further to-do to a telephone, which he had been dialing all morning in a futile effort to reach a number in New York. He had, of course, done everything right but dial the area code, an addition to the Bell system that had somehow escaped his attention since he last attempted long distance. He was intensely pleased when New York answered, and I sunned myself in the warm glow of his gratitude for the rest of the day. All of which is by way of saying tht Wodehouse, who lived four months past his ninety-third birthday, had discovered his own secret of long life: He simply ignored what was worrisome, bothersome, or confusing in the world around him."

I have no idea what this means

2006-07-09T21:42:00.000-04:00