"Men and Events as first versions
mixing with Ostrich Feathers, bed lace,
shoe buckles, earbobs, spurs, finger rings,
silver gorgets, ear wheels, Jews harps to
accompany the days long dances."

David Matlin is a novelist, poet, and essayist. His collections of prose include How the Night is Divided
which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His latest book, Prisons, Inside New
America from Vernooykil Creek to Abu Ghraib is a new version of his original Vernooykil Creek: The Crisis of Prisons in America, and is issued with a new foreword by Ishmael Reed. Matlin’s work appears
nationwide in numerous journals, anthologies, and magazines, and he is a contributing editor of Golden
Handcuffs Review.

Matlin’s newest forthcoming writings are the novel, “A HalfMan Dreaming,” and two commentaries,
“It Might Do Well with Strawberries,” and “Sound Reaction Radio.” He is presently working on a new
collection of novellas.

Matlin is a native Californian and received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York State at
Buffalo where he studied with Robert Creeley, John Clarke, Angus Fletcher, and Diane Christian.
He lives in San Diego.