Matthew Hand: Neither Tidy Nor Meant To Be

Matthew Hand grew up around the Southeast. He writes stories about people under pressure—moral, spiritual, familial, sometimes all at once. The characters are often trying to make sense of something bigger than them: grief, memory, belief, God, or the silence that follows when none of those things show up the way they expect. But he doesn’t write to explain. He writes to document what happens when there’s no clear rescue and no one left to blame. The stories aren’t tidy. They aren't meant to be.

Tell us a bit about your most recent work.

I just finished a story called Disqualified. It’s a horror narrative that starts like a typical cabin slasher, but the protagonist knows the rules — she knows she’s supposed to die — and goes anyway. It’s really about choice and consequence, turning the genre’s moral code into something theological and personal.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

I think most of my work tends to revolve around people confronting their own grief - personal, familial, institutional. That sounds dark and depressing, but I think my approach is cleansing: here’s a mess, let’s organize it.

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer? 

Three things: 

1. I wanted an Atari 2600 like all my friends had. Instead, my dad got an Atari 800 - which was less for games and more for Word Processing. You would plug it into your television and type. 

2. My dad told me about a book he was reading that piqued my curiosity: Pet Sematary. He was reading it in paperback, so I must have been 10. 

3. I had a teacher tell me to stop daydreaming and write what I was imagining.  

What inspires you to write? 

Shower thoughts? Things I wish I could have said if I had the language and bravery years ago? Attempts to organize my own experiences and beliefs? I think they all apply.

What of your works has meant the most to you?

Two stories.

Shallow End blends two separate experiences into one fictional moment. It let me confront my own struggle with apathy — that uneasy distance between empathy and detachment — and what it means to witness harm without acting.

Is That So? gave me a way to trace the root of a certain kind of storytelling — one built on silence, on the ways shame reshapes how we remember and explain ourselves. Writing it helped me understand where my instinct to protect or conceal in narrative actually comes from.

Together, they bookend something important for me: one explores emotional numbness, the other examines where that numbness begins.

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?

I have a screenplay titled “Grand Rapids” I worked on back in 2017 with Oscar-winning producer Jane Sue Memel. It was submitted to a few contests, received positive feedback, but went nowhere. I’m currently revising as a novel. The first draft is 40K words. I need to expand from there.

What writers have influenced your style and technique?

Flannery O’Connor, Graham Greene, Raymond Carver

Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Why?

Writing is a craft. The act of self-expression in it is art, but science may structure it to a degree. We all participate in writing - both in execution and reception. The goal, at its core, is to be understood. It requires precision, empathy, and awareness of the reader - and I don’t believe those aspects can be scientifically qualified.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process? 

Editing. Short stories are manageable — it’s easier to keep voice, perspective, and momentum aligned across a few thousand words. But a novel is a different beast. It’s like trying to thread a blanket through five different looms and hoping it comes out seamless in the end.

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not? 

My writing today is mostly a product of being an avid reader. For a long time, I tried to imitate other writers—their voices, their structures, their plots—and most of that work deserved to be thrown out. But at the sentence level, that imitation taught me rhythm, precision, and restraint. As for writer friends, I don’t have many yet, but entering the Bennington MFA program gives me hope for that community to grow.

What does literary success look like to you? 

When I was twenty, success meant being a wunderkind. At thirty, it was about money. At forty, it was about respect. Now, in my fifties, it’s about being satisfied. And maybe that shift — that letting go — is why the work is finally connecting with people.

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?  

Nothing specific. For gross self-promotion my work can be found at www.southernmelancholic.com