Writing

BOOKS, ESSAYS, ARTICLES, POETRY, and SHORT STORIES

1) Book of interviews with college graduates. Working title: “What to do After College,” forthcoming in 2013. Interview transcriptions by Korin McGinty.

2) Oakland in Popular Memory, Thought Publishing, March 2012. Interview transcriptions by Korin McGinty, artist portraits by Laura Tomlinson, Photography by Joe Sciarrillo, and Cover by Dave Smallen.

3) Papers for the Suppression of Reality, Thought Publishing, March 2011.

4) Out of Exile: The Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan, (essayist and appendix author), September, 2008 from McSweeney’s Publishing.

5) Issue 26 of McSweeney’s Quarterly, co-author on the Uzbekistan chapter and research fellow for Where to Invade Next (a satire on the G.W. Bush Administration’s foreign policy), March, 2008 by McSweeney’s Publishing.

6) “39 Witnesses, the World, Stood Watch” (on the execution of Tookie Williams), in the Berkeley Daily Planet, Death Penalty Focus Newsletter Dec. 2005, Peace Power magazine, Smart Ass: UC Berkeley’s Voice of the Democratic Left, and Maganda.

7) “The Images of Harlem and the American Dream when Langston Hughes Was ‘in Vogue’ and Today,” 2006 Berkeley Undergrad Journal.

8) “Watching Beauty” (short story), Ishmael Reed’s Konch magazine, Fall 2005.

9) “I Gesticulated Sartre’s Being and Nothingness” (poem), Berkeley Poetry Review, Issue 36, 2005.

10) “The College Conundrum,” (on how fee increases in public colleges in California will “only broaden the gap between the rich and the poor.”) Letter to the Editor, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, 02-06-2005.

11) “The President’s War on Privacy,” Smart Ass: The Voice of Berkeley’s Democratic Left, February 2005.

12) “CIA’s Connections to Pinochet Overlooked,” Los Angeles Times, Letter to the Editor, 12-20-2004.

13) “The US’s Role in Fighting Infectious Diseases in Third World Countries,” excerpts appear in United Nations Association-USA East Bay Chapter News, May/June 2001.

EDITING

1) Collaborated with a Persian scholar on an English translation of Rumi’s Book of the Sun, 2009.

2) Collected UC Berkeley Lectures of Ricardo Lagos, President of Chile, to be published by an academic press in 2009. Lagos transcriptions by Korin McGinty.

3) Creative development & article selection, 2006 Best American Nonrequired Reading, Houghton Mifflin, Fall 2006.

4) Copy editing & fact checking many articles and interviews for 28 issues of the Believer magazine, Issues 8 – 36, McSweeney’s Publishing, 2003-2006, including serialized installments of The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping vs. the Dirt, by Nick Hornby, H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, by Michel Houellebecq, and What is the What, by Dave Eggers.

5) Creative development and submission reading, McSweeney’s Quarterly Issues 12 and 17, McSweeney’s Publishing, 2003-2006.

6) Chapter editor, caption author, proofreader, Surviving Justice: America’s Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, 2005.

7) Fact checking & proofreader, The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers, McSweeney’s Publishing, 2005.

8) Narrative development with Balboa High School students, I Might Get Somewhere, with a foreword by Amy Tan, 2005.

9) Copy editor and writer, The Daily Californian, Fall 2004 and Spring 2005.

10) Student editor, 2003 Best American Nonrequired Reading, Houghton Mifflin, Fall 2003.

PUBLISHED INTERVIEWS

1) The Rumpus Interview with Oakland Artist Ise Lyfe. TheRumpus.net, Sep. 2011.

2) The Rumpus Interview with Chinaka Hodge. TheRumpus.net, Sep. 2010.

3) “An Interview with Berkeley’s Latest Rhodes Scholar,” (an interview with Asya Passinsky, transcribed by Korin McGinty), excerpted from Matt’s forthcoming oral narrative collection on ‘what to do after college.’ Published by UC Berkeley’s Alumni Association, August, 2008.

4) Question author, collaborator, and editor for an interview with the poet/actor/musician/activist Saul Williams. Berkeley Poetry Review, Spring, 2008.

5) “Stephen Elliott’s Journey from Sadomasochism to Stanford,” The Daily Californian, February 10, 2005.

For audio interviews, search “DJ Matt Werner” on iTunes. This podcast series from 2008-2009 features my radio interviews on Fresh Air: The Alternative, University of Edinburgh Student Radio.

JOURNALISM

1) “Building Tolerance,” (on why Boston College needs a Gay-Straight Alliance), The Heights, 2003.

2) “Poetry Slams Boston Area,” The Heights, December 26, 2002.

3) “Concert Benefits Battered Women’s Shelter,” The Heights, October 29, 2002.

VIDEO and DOCUMENTARIES

1) Google Apps Mobile Management. December, 2011.

2) Producer/editor for the short documentaries on JC Orton and Night on the Streets Catholic Worker in Berkeley, California, June, 2009. Click to view the short films: “6 Questions for JC Orton.”
“JC Orton on The School of the Americas.” “That Spark of Divinity” (forthcoming).

3) Producer and editor for promotional videos for the Global Micro-Clinic Project. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLDoZlb8LXs. (GMCP has been renamed Microclinic International)

4) General assistance, Issue 2 of Wholphin: DVD Magazine of Rare and Unseen Short Films. Published by McSweeney’s, 2006.

See http://www.youtube.com/djmattwerner and http://www.youtube.com/therealmichaelcera for more videos, music videos, movie trailers, and DJ routines I make for fun in my free time.

BOOK REVIEWS

1) Review of  Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life by Michael Krasny in the San Francisco Regional Mensa Intelligencer, June, 2008.

2) Review of The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan in the San Francisco Regional Mensa Intelligencer, May, 2008.

3) Review of The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan for Conscious Lifestyle.

ARTICLES ABOUT MATT

1) “Slammin’: Poems by the People, for the People,” by Camille Dodero, Boston College Magazine, Winter 2003

WRITING PRIZE COMMITTEES

1) 2008 – present Berkeley Prize Essay Competition committee member

WRITING EXPERIENCE

Matt has done freelance editing and writing for nonprofit organizations like The Global Micro-Clinic Project, Sparkseed, and UC Berkeley’s Center for Latin American Studies; for tech companies like BlueLithium (purchased by Yahoo!); and also for individuals who have successfully applied for prestigious scholarships, grants, and fellowships.

As freelancer, Matt has performed professionally for assignments ranging from translating poetry, editing short stories, transcribing and fact-checking the speeches of a former Latin American head of state, developing a UC Berkeley course syllabus, editing peer-reviewed psychological journal articles, PhD dissertations, and editing media for college-level physics, astronomy, biology, and anatomy and physiology textbooks. Matt has much experience editing in AP, Chicago, MLA, and APA styles.