Escape Pod 249: Little M@tch Girl
Show Notes
Show Notes:
- We’re back, we hope you liked our Hugo offering! Be sure to vote before July 31!
Next week… Escape Pod ventures into the world of novellas.
Little M@tch Girl
By Heather Shaw
It wasn’t that Em disapproved of drug use, you just had to be savvy about which drugs you took. Back before she had to get a day job, she was a M@tch girl, much to the delight of the guys on the club scene. M@tch wasn’t a wimpy drug, but it didn’t turn you into a murderous street zombie either. It was also expensive — a designer “where it’s @!” drug — that the Tweakers couldn’t afford anyway.
About the Author
Heather Shaw
Heather Shaw is a writer, editor, bookkeeper, and lindy hopper living in Berkeley, CA with her husband and 8-year-old son, River. She’s the fiction editor at the new pro-SF zine, Persistent Visions(persistentvisionsmag.com). She’s had short fiction published in Strange Horizons, The Year’s Best Fantasy, Escape Pod, PodCastle, and other nice places. She’s been a featured author at the SF in SF Reading series in San Francisco and read her poetry in front of disgruntled grunge concert-goers at Lollapalooza back when it was a thing.
Heather is also the fiction editor of a new SF magazine, paying pro rates, called Persistent Visions. It will be free to read online, and she’ll be looking for fresh fiction that skirts the edges of reality, pushes the boundaries of where we’ve been, and has an updated, innovative perspective on the people we will become; she wants stories that include a diverse cast of characters, that push conventional assumptions regarding race, gender, neurodiversity, disability, and sexuality in thought-provoking, exciting new ways.
About the Narrator
Mur Lafferty
An inaugural inductee of the Podcast Academy’s Hall of Fame, Mur Lafferty began podcasting in 2004 and later built her writing career from her work as a science fiction podcaster.
As of 2026, Mur has written ten novels, eight novellas, and one nonfiction book. Her work has ranged from Star Wars to superhero fiction to afterlife fiction to paranormal fantasy to space murder–plus one book supporting writers based on her award winning podcast.
After winning the 2013 Astounding Award for Best New Writer, her work has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Parsec, Philip K. Dick, Manly Wade Wellman, and Podcast Peer Awards. Her podcast Ditch Diggers, with Matt Wallace, won the 2018 Best Fancast Hugo Award.
As an editor, Mur was the first editor of Pseudopod and Mothership Zeta, and is currently the co-editor of Escape Pod (with Valerie Valdes), eight-time finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.
Her nonfiction work has appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table, and on the podcast The Dragon Page. In 2014, she received an MFA in popular fiction from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine.
She lives in Durham, NC, with her husband. She likes video games, tabletop games, murder mysteries, and dogs.
