Matt Briggs, reading from the Publication Studio edition of his book, Virility Rituals of North American Teenage Boys, at the Associated Writing Conference in Boston on Saturday, March 9, 2013.
School period
College/University
Gallery of Matt Briggs
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States
In 1995, Matt received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Washington.
Gallery of Matt Briggs
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, United States
Briggs studied the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, graduating with a Master of Arts degree in 2000.
(The novel is told in twelve linked stories, each of which...)
The novel is told in twelve linked stories, each of which is a chapter, told in turn by the members of a counter-culture family in the process of destroying itself. The novel takes place over twenty years, from the '70's to the 90's, from the beginnings of familial disintegration to its individual members coming to terms.
(The summer Aldous Bohm turns nine, his parents move to th...)
The summer Aldous Bohm turns nine, his parents move to the woods near Snoqualmie, Washington, "to reinvent the American family". The Bohm's are working-class hippies in post-Vietnam America. Their makeshift pastoral takes shape in a haze of pot smoke and good intentions and ultimately births a vortex of personal insecurity and romanticism, taking the family deeper into the woods to destroy them. Aldous oversees these tragedies, recalled a decade later, after he has left Snoqualmie to join the military in the buildup to the first Gulf War. Sweeping in scope yet unerringly precise in its detail, "Shoot the Buffalo" conjoins the dead-end narrative of American masculinity with its stubborn twin - the Romantic ideal of nature - to suggest an ambivalent way forward, a path out of these woods.
(In the shadow of the Boeing plant, where the first commer...)
In the shadow of the Boeing plant, where the first commercial jet liner was assembled, a family lives in a house in a rural landscape, filled with stumps, streams, chocked with the dead salmon and no one, who can help. The sixties in Renton, Washington, were a mix of jet age technology and subsistence farming. Roger Carnation is a stepfather, who regards his new family as an acquisition. He has daughters to train to do what he needs. He has a wife to clean house and prepare food. He has a son to train as a replacement man. The novel is told through the five points of view as the story advances toward its inevitable end.
("Virility Rituals of North American Teenage Boys" tells s...)
"Virility Rituals of North American Teenage Boys" tells stories, set at the boundary between real men and boys in man drag. In the title story, a man tells the various myths, associated with his manhood from the Breakfast Club, inspired obsession with "Elephantitis of the nuts" to an unexpected bodily testing sequence, executed under the florescent glare of middle school lights. The characters in the fourteen stories live in the shadow of a failed macho culture.
Matt Briggs is an American writer, who creates novels and short stories. He is the author of such works, as "Shoot the Buffalo", "The Remains of River Names", "The Double E" and others.
Background
Matt Briggs was born in 1970, in Seattle, Washington, United States. He is a son of Ronald C. Briggs and Mildred M. (Huxley) Briggs. Matt's working-class, hippie parents, who cultivated and sold cannabis (drug), raised him in the Snoqualmie Valley.
Education
In his early years, Briggs, after attending a high school, joined the United States Army Reserve. His unit was deployed to the Gulf War and Matt served as a laboratory technician in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
In 1995, after his return to the United States, Matt received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Washington. Also, he studied the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, graduating with a Master of Arts degree in 2000.
During the period from 1997 till 2003, Briggs held a post of an editor at The Raven Chronicles. Between 2001 and 2003, he produced The Rendezvous Reading Series. Later, beginning in 2003 until 2005, Matt acted as a writer-in-residence at Richard Hugo House. There, Briggs served as a writing classes teacher for the chronically ill at Gilda’s Club and the Polyclinic, produced literary events and offered open hours to the community.
In April 2005, Matt, together with Matthew Stadler, organized the Unassociated Writers Conference and Dance Party in order to promote an alternative literary culture of zines, micro presses and project-based publishing. Two years later, in 2007, Matt acted as a curator for the Jack Straw Writers series.
During his career, Briggs has published his work in different magazines, including 5_Trope, The Clackamas Review, The Seattle Review and Zyzzyva. Also, he has performed at Bumbershoot and What the Heck Fest.
Currently, Matt lives and works in the Seattle area.
Matt was influenced by Raymond Carver after reading Carver’s "Where I’m Calling From" and by other short story writers like Alice Munro and Andre Dubus.
Interests
Hiking and graphic design
Connections
Matt married Lisa Purdy on October 12, 1996. Their marriage produced one child - Riley Ella.