Lydia Mathis has an MFA in fiction from New York University. She earned her BA in English Literature with a minor in Classical Civilizations from Agnes Scott College. She
has worked as a teacher for Teach for America in Memphis and as a teaching fellow at Coler-Goldwater Hospital in New York City. She is the recipient of
A Public Space’s 2023 Editorial Fellowship and is currently an assistant editor at
A Public Space. She has stories published in
North American Review,
Southeast Review,
Torch Magazine,
Stanchion,
Five on the Fifth, and
oranges journal.
Mathis's debut story collection is
Desperate Bodies.
At Lit Hub she tagged
five "books that have an entrancing focus on the body." One title on the list:
Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad
Frankenstein in Baghdad takes the classic, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, to the U.S. occupied city of Baghdad, and presents us with Hadi, a 
scavenger, a liar, and the man who creates the Whatitsname, the stitched together body of people who died in bomb attacks. Hadi’s reasoning for his creation of the Whatitsname is for the victims to get a proper burial. By combining the pieces of bodies he finds, and turning them into a complete body, he concludes that the government will have to recognize the parts as people. Maybe even more than Shelley’s Frankenstein, Frankenstein in Baghdad, truly makes one consider what makes a person a person. If my arm is by itself, the rest of my body lost to it, is it still me? Does some essential element of myself reside in it when it’s left alone? Each body part that makes up the Whatitsname seem to have some element of the person it was once apart of still in it. The Whatitsname becomes a sort of vigilante, getting revenge on those that harmed the parts of itself. But the Whatitsname takes on goals of its own, as it needs more flesh in order to survive. And all of this is wrapped in a story that feels like an epic, with epithets for the wide cast of characters, and a fluid and spiraling movement through time and in and out of points of views.
Read about
another entry on the list.
Frankenstein in Baghdad is among
Leah Rachel von Essen's seven horror novels inspired by Frankenstein.
--Marshal Zeringue
has worked as a teacher for Teach for America in Memphis and as a teaching fellow at Coler-Goldwater Hospital in New York City. She is the recipient of A Public Space’s 2023 Editorial Fellowship and is currently an assistant editor at A Public Space. She has stories published in North American Review, Southeast Review, Torch Magazine, Stanchion, Five on the Fifth, and oranges journal.
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