Matthew George Lally currently lives in beautiful East Boston, Massachusetts (home of Jermaine Wiggins). He graduated from Norwood (MA) Senior High School in 1995 (home of Aaron Guild) and from the University of Notre Dame (IN) with a degree in English in 1999.

In his essay, "Practicing the (Almost) Lost Art," Stephen King declares the short story to be nearing "the lip of the drop into extinction's pit" and asks "how long publishers can be expected to publish books of a type [short story collections] that doesn't interest readers very much."

Stephen King, of course, has forgotten more about the fiction marketplace than I'll ever know, but since I believe (or maybe just hope) he's wrong about the short story becoming a "lost art," I give you MattLally.com, a website dedicated to the telling of (mostly short) stories.

So, as the months go by, is each "Matt's Pick" just further proof that the short story is alive and well? No, probably not. But whenever you come here to read a story and find one you like ... well, now we're getting somewhere. Now the question becomes, is the goal of MattLally.com to prove a point (because King's wrong) or to start a movement (because he's right)? "Yet for me," King goes on to say, "there are few pleasures so excellent as sitting in my favorite chair on a cold night with a hot cup of tea, listening to the wind outside and reading a good story which I can complete in a single sitting." (King, Stephen; Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales; Scribner: New York, 2002.)

I've no doubt he's right about that. Enjoy the site, enjoy the stories.