My name is Cory Massaro. I write speculative fiction in both prose and verse. I grew up in Ohio, U.S.A., in a working-class Rust Belt town; I am currently at home in Quito, Ecuador. I hold a B.A. in creative writing and classics from Duke University as well as M.A.s in comparative literature and computational linguistics. I love to learn new languages and find ways to speak them!
I am The Wild Word's associate editor and fiction editor. Since October 2021, I've been producing a column there called Let's Do Luddism, as well as an ongoing flash fiction/poetry series, The Luddite Bestiary. The former is broadly techno-pessimistic; the latter treats technology through imaginative genres like speculative evolution.
I write because I have some Thoughts and I hope somebody will correct them. For example, I don't believe in technology, but I do think that one day a bird or plant will accidentally do something cool with technological trash. I don't believe in Amerigo; I do believe in Abya Yala and Turtle Island. I have experienced mental illness and seen it unfold around me; I believe it is both a health crisis and also a political crisis caused by poverty and working class torment.
I have all of these Thoughts on labor and mental health and technology because, for the last several years, writing software has been my Neoliberalism Survival Tactic. I have primarily worked in language technology and related fields. On the lighter side, this has added a new dimension to my writing practices. I give multi-lingual writing workshops where participants use software tools to find inspiration in the infinite linguistic landfill of the Internet. Check out my workshops and experimental art pages for more information.
If you also have Bad Thoughts about technology and labor politics; or if you want to weld poems from stuff you find in the Junkyard Internet; or if you want to read about speculative avian evolution, I hope you'll find something here to interest you.