Night Watch

Mathew Goldberg’s debut short story collection, is the recipient of the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction. Forthcoming from Willow Springs Books.

Mathew Goldberg’s new book has the vivid, precise language we expect of a poet, but the author also knows how to create complex and compelling narratives. Add to this mix Goldberg’s memorable dialogue and the result is that rare alchemy that only the best short story writers achieve. Night Watch is a marvelous collection, one of the best I’ve read in a long while.

—Ron Rash, author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall, in addition to four prizewinning novels.

I couldn’t stop reading.  The stories in Night Watch are as heart-piercing and tender, as they are propulsive and tender. Goldberg’s style and approach to characterization makes me feel like a voyeur…Goldberg’s razor-sharp stories remind me there are extraordinary, sometimes diabolical narratives we don’t see, hidden in the ordinary.

—Deesha Phiyaw, author of the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award winner, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.

Mathew Goldberg’s characterization is a marvel, taking characters that elicit our empathy—a teenager finding a murdered woman, an engineer chasing his bipolar mother, a sleepwalking daughter caring for her father after an aneurysm—and showing us, too, their profound weaknesses. The stories in Night Watch, beautifully and precisely rendered, force us to grapple with the things we most need to see.

—Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas

The stories in Mathew Goldberg’s Night Watch are luminous with the closely observed truths of our existence. Each one is a gem. I fell in love with the sometimes tender, sometimes funny, and always spot-on stories about people on the periphery—the loners, the cast-asides, the oddly and accidentally gifted. Night Watch is a stunning debut.

 —Lee Martin, author of the Pulitzer Prize Finalist, The Bright Forever