Southern Melancholic
Stories of silence, memory, and fragile ritual.
Published Stories
Susurrus
Susurrus
Half and One
A grieving Southern widow uses an iPad to speak with her dead, preacher husband, trapping herself in a glitching, digital purgatory of artificial comfort.
Narrated by the house itself, this story observes a family’s quiet daily routines, fading intimacy, and the lingering electronic echoes of a happier past.
A minor car registration oversight triggers an adult’s deep-seated memory of growing up poor under the judgmental gaze of a powerful church deacon, revealing how early shame forces a child to master the adaptive art of the survival lie.
The Watershed Journal
The Rock Salt Journal
Rooted Literary Journal
A brief escape to meet an online crush ends in a fleeting, awkward encounter after she reveals she is pregnant by another man, forcing a desperate drive home to a relationship on the brink of collapse.
A lonely librarian battles her inner chaos by projecting absurd, hilariously erotic subtext onto children's books to woo a clueless, bearded father who visits her branch.
A father takes his son into a hungering forest to fulfill a dark generational ritual, sacrificing himself to a terrifying, ancient family inheritance.
Tales from the Crosstimbers
Necksnap Magazine
The Lemonwood Quarterly
A librarian faces a sterile interrogation for circulating a banned, reality-warping book, only to completely upend the control of her captors when it is revealed that one of the interrogators actually authored the text, trapping them all within its recursive narrative.
A lonely teenage girl in a desolate rural home is seduced by a mysterious traveling salesman who uses a parasitic, reality-warping kudzu plant to physically harvest her limbs for his collection.
A middle-aged woman secretly hides her husband’s body in a garage chest freezer after he dies during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, choosing to impersonate his digital presence on Slack and email for months rather than face the outside world.
Neon Origami
Bull: Men's Fiction
The Arkansas Review
An aging ensemble actor, his exhausted donut-shop worker wife, and their college-student daughter each quietly navigate a profound sense of isolation, ultimately finding solace in their bond with one another despite an unfulfilled longing for a wider circle of friends.
A father struggling with emotional reactivity after stopping his focus medication experiences an intense spiral of rage over a glitching streaming app, realizing with deep shame that his young son has already learned to cautiously navigate his volatile temper.
An sensitive, non-conforming boy in a small Southern town is violently turned on and beaten by a classmate he thought was a friend, choosing to passively endure the assault rather than fight back in a desperate, heartbreaking attempt to preserve any hope of social belonging.
The San Antonio Review
Ginosko Literary Journal
Coming Soon
A guilt-ridden newlywed on his honeymoon at a remote Prince Edward Island farmhouse becomes consumed by the chilling conviction that a sinister presence is watching him and his wife, a fear that deepens when he discovers a locked basement with no escape.
A vulnerable new mother waiting to be discharged from the hospital is consumed by an intense, deep-seated dread that her husband will abandon her and their newborn, realizing that even after he safely returns from a minor valet delay, the haunting fear of sudden isolation has permanently woven itself into her view of parenthood.
A father reflects on the fragile, temporary nature of parental shelter during a long road trip to move his two daughters into college, witnessing one daughter effortlessly embrace her independence while the other immediately rejects her new environment, highlighting the bittersweet reality that parents must build shelter their children may ultimately choose to leave behind.
Behind the Page
Matthew Hand is a Southern writer whose fiction explores grief, fragile masculinity, ritual, memory, and the quiet failures of faith. His stories often carry a gothic undercurrent, drawing deeply from the haunted landscapes and heavy silences of the region he calls home. His narrative style captures the intricate, often unsaid tensions within families and small communities, blending atmospheric prose with a sharp emotional realism.
Currently pursuing his MFA in Writing and Literature at Bennington College, Matthew balances his writing life with his work as a stage actor in metro Atlanta’s theatre community. This background in performance heavily shapes his approach to dialogue, pacing, and the structural anatomy of a scene.
A husband and father of four, Matthew is currently revising his debut novel and polishing a collection of short stories. When he isn’t at his desk or in the wings of a theater, he shares his passion for the craft and history of the short story form with a growing community on TikTok.
Lots of People Talk About Books...
I Talk About Short Stories.
Harrison Bergeron
Let's talk about Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron"
The Husband Stitch
Let's talk about Carmen Maria Machado's "The Husband Stitch"
White Nights
Let's talk about Fyodor Dostoevsky's "White Nights"
The Lion Tamer's Son
Let's talk about S.A. Cosyby's "The Lion tamer's Son"
The Midnight Meat Train
Let's talk about Clive Barker's "The Midnight Meat Train"
Everything That Rises Must Converge
Let's talk about Flannery O'Connor's "Everything that Rises Must Converge"