Matthew Kielty: Hi. I hail from the great state of Minnesota. Despite growing up in that frozen tundra, I despised the winter. To fill that eight-month void, I spent most of my time playing basketball or my guitar, picking up songs that coincided with my always-changing music tastes (including some terrible music, in retrospect). Upon reaching legal adult status, I bolted from the cities and arrived in Tucson to attend the UA. After two years of nativism and naïve complaints about Tucson's lack of stuff to do, I managed to escape the UA campus bubble and wound up at the Weekly. Now, with a better perspective on this city, I'm covering upcoming events in Tucson, as well as doing the occasional story on any interesting happenings.
Andrew Mortazavi: In addition to writing for the Tucson Weekly, Andrew Mortazavi writes fiction, a practice he considers about as noble as it is futile. His stories have appeared in literary journals such as Cream City Review and Roanoke Review. Each and every day, he struggles to remind himself how blessed he is to be a Beverly Rogers Creative Writing Fellow in the UA's MFA program. Before moving to Arizona last year, he spent the vast majority of his life in Texas, where he was raised on a farm, ranch and nursery. Sometimes, he considers a return to the agricultural life, another futile noble endeavor, because running cattle is still, on average, more lucrative than a career in the arts. His pedal steel playing is coming along slowly but nicely.
