Jerry D. Mathes's Blog

Recently, Ana Palacios interviewed me for PEN America about my forthcoming memoir. #OfTimeAndPunishment

Read the interview here: I’ve Always Been Fighting

Here is a link to pre-order Of Time and Punishment: A Memoir

On the advice of someone who knows, I started a Substack to write about strategies for writing about incarceration and its aftermath and explore other incarceration issues.

Here’s the first entry: Let’s Get Started

My essay with photos has been published by War, Literature & the Arts, the literary journal of the United States Air Force Academy. Here is a link to the journal: WLA 2024

WLA 36_Homelessness of the Brave_2024Download

Excited to see my essay, “In Strange Company,” published in Wordrunner eChapbooks anthology Displacement. A shoutout to editor Jo-Anne for her guidance, Nick for his brilliant editing, and the whole editorial team for selecting it as Editors Choice!

Read the rest of “In Strange Company” here.

A few eclipse photos I took. I used a Nikon D 600 with a 70-300mm Nikon lens. The last one is cool to me because it looks a sun and moon drawing someone would do, but I got it live

In honor of the total solar eclipse 2024, here is is a short story inspired by the 2017 total solar eclipse I wrote. It won the Fall 2017 Narrative Award and published in 2018. Enjoy – JMath

The sun is starting to shine through some of the valleys. We can still the prominences, the chromosphere, and the corona. 2017.Totality_Mathes_IIDownload

Here is my essay that appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of Ploughshares.

On-the-Origin-of-Time_Mathes_PloughsharesDownload

Photo by Aubrey Jerue

‘Vietgone’ – zany, sexy, and maybe even a little bit true

Just got off the phone with the editor at War, Literature & the Arts, published at United States Air Force Academy. They are going to publish my essay, “The Homelessness of the Brave,” next year. These are a few photos from the trip I made to Veterans Row in West Los Angeles to talk with veterans about their lives. This is part of a larger project, Ill Served: Veterans and Mass Incarceration. It’ll look at the military’s complex role in mass incarceration.

The first maps and a notebook.

I’ve struggled a long time to tell stories, important stories. I keep coming back to the desert, both where I grew up and where I’ve worked, remote areas miles from any home. What is it that keeps drawing me back? I keep thinking I will discover it through different projects, but something always lacks. I don’t know. I’ve long wanted to make a film and have made some shorts or have been the writer and general helper on a couple. I always felt limited in what I could do with the equipment and time that I had to dedicate to such a project. Plus, there was always my lack of confidence that anyone would want to hear what I had to say or self-consciousness about myself and ability as a filmmaker. But as I was watching a documentary about documentaries, Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary, Werner Herzog’s words came back to me. Into the desert I go.