MATTHEW SALESSES

Speaker + Author + bestselling novelist + creative writing Scholar

Matthew salesses’s bio

Dr. Matthew Salesses (he/him) is the author of eight books, most recently The Sense of Wonder, the national bestseller Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping (a Best Book of 2021 at NPR, Esquire, Library Journal, Independent Book Review, Chicago Tribune, Electric Literature, and others), and the PEN/Faulkner Finalist and Dublin Literary Award longlisted novel Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear. He also wrote The Hundred-Year Flood; I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying; Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity; The Last Repatriate; and Our Island of Epidemics (out of print). Forthcoming is a memoir, To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time (Little, Brown).

Matthew was adopted from Korea. In 2015 Buzzfeed named him one of 32 Essential Asian American Writers. His essays can be found in Best American Essays 2020, NPR Code Switch, The New York Times Motherlode, The Guardian, Time, VICE.com, and other venues. His short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, PEN/Guernica, Witness, and elsewhere. He has received awards and fellowships from, among others, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Dublin Literary Award, Bread Loaf, Glimmer Train, Mid-American Review, and [PANK] Books.

Matthew is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Virginia Tech. He earned a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Emerson College. He serves on the editorial boards of Green Mountains Review and Machete (an imprint of The Ohio State University Press), and has held editorial positions at Pleiades, The Good Men Project, Gulf Coast, and Redivider. He has read and lectured widely at conferences and universities and on TV and radio, including PBS, NPR, Al Jazeera America, various MFA programs, and the Tin House, Kundiman, and One Story writing conferences.

Get social with Matthew Salesses

Website | Instagram | Twitter | Visit Matthew at APL!

books by matthew salesses

matthew salesses in the media

Recent Articles Featuring Matthew Salesses:

• Matthew Salesses on the Possibilities of Climate Fiction | LitHub

• How I Found My Desire to Live After My Wife Died | Time

• Matthew Salesses on Writing Plot and Cultural Context | LitHub

• 'Good-looking for an Asian': how I shed white ideals of masculinity | The Guardian

Podcasts with Matthew Salesses: