The Keeper of Valuable Objects, by Gabriel Matthew Granillo

Prose, chapbook, 40 pages, from Bottlecap Features. A child actor of Mexican descent, in a desperate quest for worth during the Golden Age of the Hollywood Western, makes a fateful deal with a mysterious man. A talk show host in the midst of dwindling ratings and a crisis of identity unravels during a live taping. A son attempts to rekindle his relationship with his musician father who's losing his hearing, connecting the dots between his father's one-hit-wonder and a recent incident that has brought unwanted attention. The Keeper of Valuable Objects collects three short stories (“Eddie V. on the Silver Screen,” “Studio C,” “Watch Out for Sprinkles”), each connected by shared themes of perception, identity, and legacy. The stories in Gabriel Matthew Granillo’s debut chapbook blend folklore and absurdist slice-of-life storytelling for a nimble collection that’s steeped in humor and intimacy, examining the fickle business of creativity and the artist's never ending quest for meaning. Gabriel Matthew Granillo is a writer, editor, and photographer living in Portland, Oregon. His fiction and poetry have appeared in both print and online journals, including Postcard Poems and Prose, Flash Fiction Magazine, Timberline Review, Superstition Review, and the Bombay Literary Magazine.