Matt Pasca

Matt Pasca makes his home on the south shore of Long Island in Bay Shore with his wife Terri and orange-haired sons Rainer and Atticus. A graduate of Cornell University and Stony Brook University, he has taught Creative Writing, Mythology and Literature at Bay Shore High School since 1997. He was named New York State Teacher of Excellence in 2003 and is the advisor of The Writers’ Block, named Most Outstanding High School Literary-Art Magazine for 2010 by the American Scholastic Press Association. Pasca’s poetry has appeared in The Long Island Quarterly, The Pedestal Magazine, and JB Stillwater’s on-line literary journal. Pasca's first book, A Thousand Doors (JB Stillwater), was published in April 2011 and has been well-received by fellow writers, academics, and the general public. For press about the book, or to contact Matt about workshops, readings or any topic at all, visit his site at www.mattpasca.com or email him at simileman@optonline.net.

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Books by Matt Pasca

Poet Matt Pasca explores how personal suffering can be transformed into grace, as if through alchemy, when that grief can be shared with others. Using the Buddhist “Mustard Seed” parable as scaffolding, Pasca’s work pays homage to Kisa Gotami’s quest to save her son by finding a home where, impossibly, no suffering has befallen the inhabitants. Pasca’s poems manuever deftly between the seemingly simple and mundane details of the world around us and the sublime world we often miss in the myopia of our pain. Just as Gotami comes to see her grief reflected in the eyes behind the doors upon which she desperately knocks, we too find our own sorrows and pleasures illumined by the light of Pasca’s unflinching exploration and delicate crafting. In the end, A Thousand Doors testifies to the necessity of sharing our stories with courage and vulnerability, and how doing so can lead us further down the path of joy.