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November 10, 2025

New Book Released! Gift of the Oregon Magi & Other Christmas Tales of Homelessness

Dear Friend of Nestucca Spit Press:

My new book, Gift of the Oregon Magi & Other Christmas Tales of Homelessness, is out for the holidays and I invite you to support it with a purchase, perhaps multiple purchases to give away as gifts.

This will be the last book published by Nestucca Spit Press, founded in 2002, for the foreseeable future. I sense my writing (and activism) moving in a new direction with this recent move to Coos Bay. I am considering launching a newspaper or literary review to serve my new community.

Information about Gift of the Oregon Magi & Other Christmas Tales of Homelessness,is below. Thanks to all of you who have bought Nestucca Spit Press books over the years, mine and the other authors I’ve published. It’s made all the difference.

Gift of the Oregon Magi & Other Christmas Tales of Homelessness

December arrives. Outdoor Christmas decorations go up, enchant, perhaps even move hearts to better Bob Cratchit places. What happens to homeless men and women during Christmas? What does it mean and how do they celebrate if they celebrate at all?

And how do those who are housed in the midst of homeless in their communities, sometimes interacting with their quasi neighbors, respond to the crisis when Christmas rolls around, if they respond at all?

In Gift of the Oregon Magi & Other Christmas Tales of Homelessness, Matt Love explores these questions and more. “My dream for this book is that every holiday season, readers will read aloud one or more of these stories to their friends and family and begin a discussion about homelessness that affects every community in rural, suburban and urban America and what all of us can do to alleviate it,” said Love.

Gift of the Oregon Magi features 15 tales and one incredible true story. Many have appeared in print or online, but the collection also includes nine tales never before previously published.

The book can be purchased directly from Nestucca Spit Press at www.nestuccaspitpress.com or via Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FR4TDMFR

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.

Buy Bundle Direct From Author (PDF & ePub Download)

Buy eBook on Amazon