Hi, I'm Matt Summers-Sparks.
I'm a full-stack developer. There's more on my development work below.
I'm also a writer and editor. Several clips and links are in Writing.
If you want to get in touch, email is the easiest.
Development work
I've been a full-time developer since 2017, and build projects primarily in Drupal, a wonderful, open-sourced content management system. I also manage servers, firewalls and develop our Engaging Networks forms and emails.
I work in the following languages: PHP, Javascript (including vanilla, React and Node.js), Python and CSS.
I also work on other projects, including personal websites (like this one) and interactive real-world items based on Raspberry Pis, including clocks, doorbells and other projects, like music cards, which has its own website, too.
I can be reached on:
Writing
I've been a writer and editor for several years. Today I primarily write fiction, occasional journalism and documentation.
These are some of my favourite pieces I've written, by outlet.
New York Times
I've written around a dozen stories, some brief, some 1800 words, for the New York Times. These are my favourites:
- If These Walls Could Talk, They Would Say Nothing - A peek inside hidden rooms
- One Part Cement, Two Parts Whimsy, One Odd Park - New York Times - A profile of the sculptor Bob Cassilly as he was transforming a disused industrial area in the middle of the U.S. into something amazingly distinct
These have also appeared in the NYT:
- When Old Stadiums Go, Everything Must Go!
- Luxury Living in a Hyperactive Building
- A Look at Ealing Classics
- Rock On, Apocalypse: Nine Bands Played, and the House Fell Down
- At London’s National Gallery, a Room of Semi-Hidden Treasures
- London Museum Revisits Lost Collections
- London Series Turns Sermons Inside-Out
McSweeney's
I've been fortunate to write both non-fiction and fiction for this magazine.
No Hurry, Pennsylvania Avenue and Disagreement - McSweeney's - Snapshots of Washington, D.C. after the September 11 attacks.
Also in McSweeney's: Dooknobs of America and Eating a 70-Ounce Steak in an Hour, Part 1 and Part 2.
Me and the Ruffz - Pursuing a lifetime goal of joining a bicycle gang.
Four Short Plays about Selling a Glass-Top Coffee Table, as Posted by My Neighbour, George, in Our Apartment Building's Elevator - This features a former coffee table I owned.
More from McSweeney's:
- Windows Messages, as if Rewritten by Scott, Who Bullied Me when I Was Seven - an expanded version of this wound up in May Include Nuts, a HarperCollins-published humour anthology
- Reviews of a Struggling Actor's First Three Bank Heists
- The Blots v The Sharks: The Blots' Playbook
- Spring 2001 Project
- "The Doggie.com Name Has Been Registered": Register.com's Proposed Alternate Domain Names
- Passwords Printed on the Eight Trial Software Packages AOL Has Mailed to Me since December 20, and an Imagined Exchange Between AOL and Me
The Morning News
Now primarily a newsletter, for years TMN published short essays and humour each weekday. These are some of my favourite pieces I wrote for them:
- Dense Photography - About my style of photography, which got its name by over-cramming significance in frame, thereby reducing the number of photos required
- Hours Away - The night of Obama's 2008 election victory, seen in London
- A Portrait of the Artist Standing Atop Michelangelo's "Pietà" - One of my favourite artists, Bob Cassilly, stopped one of the most reknowned art-vandalism attacks while on his honeymoon
Washington City Paper
I wrote several pieces for this D.C. weekly towards the beginning of my freelancing career. They include profiles of:
- Photojournalist Lida Moser
- Supreme Court quill maker Nancy Floyd,
- Blown glass artist Graham Caldwell,
- Onetime New Yorker author Julian Mazor,
- Photogramist Glenn Friedel
- This piece about a silkworm-based music piece
Mississippi Review
Sunshine - I wrote this soon after I met the woman who's now my wife.
543, print only (Prize Stories 2002 Issue) and based on my time working on a Ford Motor Co. assembly line. A fun fact related to this publication is it also includes work by an author named Ravi Shankar; if he is the same sitar player who played with The Beatles, this issue is the closest I'll ever get to collaborating with The Beatles. (There's also a wonderful, contemporary poet named Ravi Shankar - he may have been the author in the book but because I'd like to even tangentially work with The Beatles, I've resisted investigating this.)
Others
- Pei Attention - Washingtonian - Visitors to the the National Gallery of Art's East Wing are compelled to touch the architect's name. (This piece was originally written for The New Yorker's Talk of the Town; they declined it, it's the closest I've gotten to being published in the magazine so far.)
- Crimetown - Denver Quarterly - Visiting the F.B.I's training town, Hogan's Alley, in Quantico, Va.
- So Orderly and So Right - Monkeybicycle, Issue 6 - About running with a steering wheel, among other things
- Harmonic - Pindeldyboz Issue 3 - Partying with surgeons
- Kindercare - Gargoyle Issue 47 - Spending days hanging out at day care
- New to the Neighbourhood - Stress City anthology
- Pieces also appeared in two Harper Collins humour anthologies, More Mirth of a Nation, May Contain Nuts and 101 Damnations. These books are wonderful and feature authors like Steve Martin, Andy Borowitz, Merril Markoe (David Letterman's former lead writer), Kurt Andersen (co-founder of SPY Magazine), and many others.