Matthew Little

Matthew Little (born July 23, 1991) is an American poet and writer.

Early life
Little was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts to parents Lynda Little and Kenneth Rapoza. He is of Portuguese and Italian decent. They split while he was in elementary school in 1999.

As a child, Little never really cared for reading or writing but did show signs of creativity. He recalled in elementary school he wrote a "children's book" about a painter cat, and even drew the pictures that went along with it. Actual writing didn't come until later; it wouldn't be until middle school where he discovered lyric writing. Also while in middle school he found joy in drawing crude comics after reading "Johnny The Homicidal Manic", a comic series by Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of the Nickelodeon show "Invader Zim". From there it developed, and one of his pursuits in life became to be a published author. After many unsuccessful tries in writing a novel, he discovered poetry after meeting his ex-boyfriend in 2012, who wrote poems of his own. At the time, Little had almost no experience in reading or writing poetry until he was shown the works of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. He never had any proper training in the medium, and claims he taught himself how to write, although he realizes he still has some growing to do.

Writing career
Little, as of August 2014, has authored two collections of poetry. He wrote Hell in a Basket: A small collection of personal poems, a chapbook which was published on August 24, 2013, independently through CreateSpace, an Amazon.com based self-publishing platform. Written between the months of January through July 2013, Little wrote extensively about the home-life he was living, which included his daily struggle dealing with an alcoholic mother and the subsequent depression and anxiety that came along with it. As his first piece published, Little originally feared readers would find it "mediocre", as he admitted to rushing writing most of the collection, but since its publication Hell in a Basket received acclaim from readers who either have identified with his words or appreciate the style which it was written.

He also published Ribbons in October 2014 which, like Hell in a Basket, is a small collection of confessional poetry. Unlike his first publication, Ribbons was published online for free after what Little says "a year [of sitting]" and accumulating poems. He wrote that he couldn't imagine coming up with other poems for the collection, and decided to release it as a way of closure, to close a chapter of his life of writing poems about his stress, anxieties, heartbreak, etc. Since being published on Wattpad, Ribbons has been viewed over 300 times and "liked" 17 times.

In 2014 Little completed his first ever short story Breaking Water which was published on Wattpad. The gruesome story details a group of sadistic men a part of a crime syndicate who kidnap pregnant women so they can steal their babies and sell them for profit, and the story centers around Lisa, one of their captures who tries to escape their clutches. The story is based on an idea he thought up while in middle school. It was published October 23, 2014 after being written in only just five days.

Subject matter
A good majority of Little's writings, especially in his poetry, deals with themes of fear and anxiety. As a suffer of anxiety and paranoia, Little has said in private that he hopes his poetry will be for people with anxiety what the poetry of Sylvia Plath's is to sufferers of depression. Candidly, Little has written about how he fears the little things of everyday life, such as hearing bangs, being around other people, and he has conveyed images of anxiety by showing his fears about who he is as a person. Little also dives into his own bouts of depression, mostly stemming from relationships or personal inward troubles. The way in which he writes was taught by how he read and view older poetry; he considers himself a traditionalist when it comes to his lines and delivery, but he keeps his subjects and how he writes about them very modern. One reviewer of Hell in a Basket noted that Little "writes with an old soul"."'Little ties these bits of grey matter together with the finesse of an accomplished poet beyond his years.' - A reviewer on Amazon"Little has also dived into the subject of living and dealing with an alcoholic parent. He has used his poetry to explicitly give readers insight to the trauma he has faced in the face of others close to him suffering from addiction. This subject has also crossed over into his prose; in his unfinished novel Teddy Bears, Little has Mark, the main character, live with a non-functioning alcoholic father, basing some of the things Mark explains to the reader on real scenes he had seen in real life.

The prose Little has published online has also given examples of how Little tends to focus on the dark side of his subjects. While Teddy Bears is, in a sense, a gay love story, it's twist is that the two lovers are on the road evading arrest after going on a robbing spree; there are also scenes and mentions of hard drug use, going into the underbelly of the lower class of the 21st century. Little's favorite tool when writing is realism, displaying things as they really are. The main character's boyfriend, Gerry, is shown to live in a small "shack" with his sister and her drug addict fiance. These images are shown partially because Little experienced living conditions such as this, and knows that he can accurately and believably convey it, and also shows it because it's a side not seen when it comes to novels dealing with the LGBT.

He has also shown a likeness to the horror genre. Little's short story Breaking Water has a very ominous grimness to it, as well as a bleak, depressing depiction of agony as it deals with the mindset of kidnapped people trying to survive even though they know they're going to die. It's appalling amount of nudity and scenes of heavy violence give it a transgressiveness; the type of horror Little enjoys is "chaotic" meaning he likes to have many loud scenes of drama followed by equally hectic amounts of terror.

Personal life
Little is openly gay. He came out to most of his family and friends in high school, and then in May 2014 told his father. In a Facebook post he described coming out to him as a major turning point in his life, ending the post with the line "I'm free." Little believes most of his anxiety issues came from having to hide his true identity from his father. In the poem "About Being Out" (originally titled "Two of Me"), he describes that he had nothing to fear, writing about his parents, "They know the time, they hug me anyway."

Mental health
Little has been very outspoken about having Generalized Anxiety Disorder. He discussed it at length in a YouTube video called "About my anxiety", where he says he was diagnosed with it in his senior year of high school in 2010, and that he "suffers" from it on "a molecular scale". It has served as inspiration for his poetry; Hell in a Basket alone has a whole chunk of poems about it and even on the back cover he wrote that the book is dedicated to his anxiety. He has since, however, been improving his life living with the disorder.

Influences
Little has said the poetry of Sylvia Plath inspired him to write poetry seriously, as her poetry was the first of any major poet he ever read. He also cites Anne Sexton as an influence.

As for his aspiring novel-writing, Little has never mentioned anyone as an influence when it comes to the medium, but has said he enjoyed the writing styles of Truman Capote, Dave Cullen, J.K. Rowling, Alex Sanchez, and Beatrice Sparks (whom was claimed to be the anonymous diarist of the novel Go Ask Alice).

Future works
Little has mentioned throughout his social media outlets that he is working on his novel writing. He is currently at work writing a novel called Teddy Bears , which deals with LGBT-themes and, as he claims, is somewhat a different take on the LGBT genre. He is also working on another novel, Florida, about a pregnant woman and her friends who are terrorized by a madman while they're having a enjoyable day by a lake. He also wrote in his release posts for Ribbons that he plans on writing more poetry for the future.

Publications
Poetry: Novels: Short stories:
 * Hell in a Basket: A small collection of personal poems. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.
 * Ribbons, Wattpad, 2014
 * Breaking Through, TBA
 * Florida, TBA
 * Teddy Bears, TBA
 * Breaking Water, Wattpad, 2014