"Brutal yet tender, wry but clear-eyed, Matter Out of Place is an eerie love letter to the West, one that will slice your heart open. These finely crafted stories navigate the dizzying contradictions demanded of women in ways that feel both timeless and painfully specific to our late-stage capitalist present.” 

—Casey Bell, author of Little Fury

“Matter Out of Place reads like a status update from the underbelly of the American dream. The Nevada setting evokes both the scarcity of the desert and the excess of the casino, creating a landscape that is by turns comical, threatening, and absurd. The collection sizzles with sounds, sights, sensations, and brutal economic assessments. Hatjakes, who writes with the observational skills of a journalist and the precision of a poet, has a sharp eye for the characters of our century: the influencers and content managers, the ghost hunters and beauty consultants, the exotic dancers and security guards. Formally inventive and psychologically astute, Matter Out of Place should win Hatjakes her own place in the literary canon of the Wild West and beyond.”

—Trudy Lewis, author of The Empire Rolls

“The Nevada landscape of Matter Out of Place is constantly shifting, requiring characters to keep up—or catch up. Readers hold out hope for these characters, while also feeling very strongly just how long the odds are for them to get what they want. Hatjakes is an exciting new voice in short fiction.” 
—Kate McIntyre, associate professor of creative writing, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, author of Mad Prairie, recipient of the Flannery O’Connor Award