Matthew Mercier
Writer, teacher, storyteller.
The living is done in upstate New York. The writing is done in basements and barns, attics and towers, huts and hobbit holes, plus the occasional monastery in Mexico.
Matthew Mercier is a writer and storyteller lucky enough to be living on a wild patch of forest and wetlands in upstate New York. He’s worked as a tour guide at the Mystic Aquarium, run a youth hostel in Albuquerque, been slimed as a salmon packer in Naknek, Alaska, provided showers for homeless men on the Bowery, and proudly served four years as docent and caretaker for the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in The Bronx. He earned an MFA from Hunter College, where he taught writing and children’s literature. His work has appeared The Brooklyn Rail, Mississippi Review, Glimmer Train, Rosebud Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, The Fairy Tale Review, Shotgun Honey and Mystery Tribune. He’s told stories live on stage with The Moth and been heard on NPR’s The Moth Radio Hour, as well The Story Collider, RISK and The Truth podcasts. He’s been awarded a residency from the Saltonstall Foundation, and the Leon B. Burstein scholarship for Mystery Writing from the New York chapter of Mystery Writers of America.
Jonah Peabody takes a job as caretaker and head docent for Poe Cottage in The Bronx, a cottage that once served as the last home for Edgar Allan Poe. The job requires Jonah to live on the premises so he can give tours on the weekend. To be more precise, he must live in the basement of Poe’s home—Poe’s Basement—much like the author did himself, many and many a year ago.
However, Poe & I, is not a memoir. It's fiction. Well, some bits happened, but other bits most certainly did not. The part about Virginia Poe’s bones? True. The bit about the Mother? Complete malarky. The point is, Poe & I is as unreliable and unbalanced as its antihero, but it’s also wild, funny, irreverent, and soaked in melancholy, a tale of family darkness, sickness, revenge, and weird museums filled with unholy treasures.
It arrives July 19, 2024 from Crystal Lake Publishing.