Nestucca Spit Press Meditations – A Blog by Matt Love

bucket

September 9, 2026

Fried Chicken at Dawn

velvet

September 8, 2026

Epistle to J

fox

September 7, 2026

Track List for Unreleased Country Triple Album

godzilla

September 6, 2026

Two Consecutive Mornings

nhs

September 5, 2026

Newport High School Graduation Speech, Class of 2009

job

September 4, 2026

Poem for JL, 4-23-23

saddle

September 3, 2026

A Walk to Astoria High School on Aug. 26, 2014

rainbow

September 2, 2026

Christmas Morning 2014

richard

September 1, 2026

My Short Oregon History with Richard Brautigan

loverboy

August 31, 2026

Speaking in Tongues

gray

August 30, 2026

Recipe For Gray

shakespeare

August 29, 2026

Shakespeare by Enema

sanbar

August 28, 2026

Parent Teacher Conference

harrison

August 27, 2026

Ode to Jim Harrison

church

August 26, 2026

Sunday Morning Service One and Two

butterfly

August 25, 2026

The Silverspot

harley

August 24, 2026

Gig in Seaside

movie

August 23, 2026

Fourth of July 2026 in Empire

green

August 21, 2026

No Green Beyond You

blackberryarticle

August 20, 2026

Blackberry Noir

mermaid2

August 19, 2026

Kidnapping the Mermaid

janetnote87

August 18, 2026

The List

ronald

August 17, 2026

The Hanging

mthood

August 16, 2026

Ode to Walt Curtis!

tat

August 15, 2026

Whale Watching

bandondunes

August 14, 2026

Ruminations on Golf

harrison

August 13, 2026

Empire Chaos

dandelion

August 12, 2026

A Dandelion

art

August 11, 2026

The Tourniquet

column

August 10, 2026

Astoria Column’s True Centennial Celebration

beth

August 9, 2026

Her Sound

whiskey

August 8, 2026

Whiskey Makes You Fun

gold

August 7, 2026

Her Gold

parsons

August 6, 2026

This Morning / July 2009

vegas

August 5, 2026

Love Letters to Annette

lucinda

August 4, 2026

Essence

park

August 3, 2026

Ode to Don, the Dog Park Dumpmaster

heron

August 2, 2026

Two Herons

August 1, 2026

Oregon Coast Wild in the Pandemic

bruce

July 31, 2026

I Want Kitty Back

NEVER STOP PRE

The Enduring Inspiration of America's Greatest Sports Legend

Buy the Book: Print $21.99 + $5 shipping

"Never stop Pre. When he's no longer relevant in Oregon, Oregon is dead."

On May 31, 1975, Coos Bay, Oregon native Steve Prefontaine died in an automobile accident. At the time of his death, he held 14 American records in distance running.

Pre was 24 years old and already a legend in Oregon and the world of track of field.

Read More - Click here to buy the ePub or Kindle Editions

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The Old Crow

Book Club

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

$15.99 + $4 Shipping

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

Sonny the husky discovers a homeless encampment destroying a creek in a Portland city park. She alerts her owner and a park ranger and inspires a community clean-up of the damaged riparian area. Neighborhood citizens and residents of the encampment join Sonny to restore a tiny part of a watershed and later celebrate their collaboration.

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