Ars longa, vita brevis.

Daniel Matthew Clark

Matt Clark, beloved, teacher, coordinator of creative writing at Louisiana State University, and a fine short story writer at the very start of his career, died of colon cancer at the age of 31 in early May of 1998 in Baton Rouge. He was surrounded by his parents, his sisters and nephews, and friends from Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
     Matt learned of his grave illness only a few months before -- in January, the day classes resumed at LSU after winter break. In the short period he had left, he entertained an endless stream of visitors with the help of his mother, Barbara, who moved in with him during his treatments. And he traveled -- to New York to see plays, to the desert with his parents, to his family home in Texas, and to New Orleans to visit the people and places he loved for the last time.
     Matt grew up in Decatur, Texas, graduated from Southern Methodist University, and came to LSU for graduate school. His stories were published in quarterlies around the country, including Alaskan Quarterly Review and Gulf Coast. He was selected as a finalist, twice, in the William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition in New Orleans.
     Fascinated by tall tales and urban legends, Matt was in the process of inventing a very new kind of Southwest magical realism, part Mark Twain, part Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His most successful story was "The West Texas Sprouting of Loman Happenstance," which was optioned for film and is still in development. Also forthcoming is Matt's first novel, Hook Man Speaks, recently published by Avon Books [2001]. Matt had a remarkable effect upon the students and other writers whose lives he touched. He single-handedly reorganized and directed the Creative Writing Program at LSU for more than 2 years, encouraging students to keep at it, to take their work seriously, to bring it to the next level. We were all blessed by his vitality, his brio, humor, his intensity, by his fascination with life by his art and his belief in art.








"... O, hell, Happenstance," I said, "Is it art? Is it not art? Who gives a damn? I didn't make the creatures, but I gave them the inspiration to paint. If I'm not the artist, then at least I'm the artist's patron. Fact is, it doesn't matter... We're both happier for knowing each other...."
                                                         —Matt Clark, "The West Texas Sprouting of Loman Happenstance"


A scholarship program has been created for graduate students at Louisiana State University's Creative Writing Program by his parents Daniel and Barbara Clark.