Matthew Salesses

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Matthew Salesses
OccupationWriter
essayist
Education
Notable awardsPEN/Faulkner Finalist
Website
matthewsalesses.com

Matthew Salesses is a Korean American fiction writer and essayist and Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA/PhD program at Oklahoma State University.

Life[edit]

Salesses was born in South Korea and adopted by white American parents at age 2.[1] He grew up in Storrs, Conn. and attended the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he studied English and creative writing. After college he taught English abroad, first in Prague and then in South Korea.[2] He earned a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston[3] and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Emerson College.[4] Salesses is currently an Assistant Professor of Writing at Columbia University.

Work[edit]

Salesses is the author of the novel The Hundred-Year Flood (Little A, 2015).[5] He is also the author of Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear: A Novel (Little A, 2020); Craft in the Real World (Catapult Books, 2021), an examination of American writing workshops and the incorporation of Asian storytelling traditions and methodology to broaden them; I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying (Civil Coping Mechanisms); Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity (Thought Catalog Books); and The Last Repatriate (Nouvella).[6]

In 2015 Buzzfeed named him one of 32 Essential Asian American Writers.[7] His essays have been published in Best American Essays 2020,[8] NPR Code Switch,[8] The New York Times Motherlode,[9] Glimmer Train,[10] and VICE.com.[11] He has received awards and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference[12] and Mid-American Review.[9]

For years, he wrote about fiction craft and pedagogy for the Pleiades blog,[13] where he was the Website Editor. He has taught at Tin House[14] and Kundiman.[15]

Controversy[edit]

In 2023, Salesses faced controversy after he compelled his Columbia University graduate students to sign a contract indicating they would fail his course if they, among other restrictions, failed to "[n]ame the race and gender of any character at first introduction," used "banned terms," or followed his accounts on social media.[16] Commenting on the controversy, Molly Bradley of Digg called these contractual provisions "the kind of thing a right-winger would invent as a hyperbolic parody of what progressive leftists want."[17] In a subsequent statement to national media, Salesses expressed regret and rescinded "any kind of punishment" stated in the original contract.[18]

Books[edit]

  • The Last Repatriate (Nouvella, 2011)
  • I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2013)
  • The Hundred-Year Flood, (Little A, 2015).
  • Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity (Thought Catalog Books, 2017)
  • Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear: A Novel (Little A, 2020)
  • Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping (Catapult Books, 2021)

References[edit]

  1. ^ "The Overwhelming Nature Of Code-Switching". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  2. ^ "Work by day, write by night". Harvard Gazette. 2011-05-12. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  3. ^ "How UH's Creative Writing Program Went to the Head of the Class". Houstonia Magazine. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  4. ^ "Emerson Faculty, Alumnus Give Insights into Writing". Emerson College Today. 2016-03-21. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  5. ^ "Publishers Weekly Review of The Hundred Year Flood". www.publishersweekly.com. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  6. ^ "Interview with Matthew Salesses". The Kenyon Review. 5 August 2019.
  7. ^ Lee, Jarry (7 May 2015). "32 Essential Asian-American Writers You Need To Be Reading". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  8. ^ a b "Five Longreads Stories Selected for 2020 Editions of the 'Best American' Series". Longreads. 2020-05-13. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  9. ^ a b Salesses, Matthew (2013-02-01). "Colin Kaepernick's Decision to Meet His Birth Mother Should Be His Own". Motherlode Blog. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  10. ^ "Matthew Salesses". www.glimmertrain.com. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  11. ^ "Matthew Salesses". Vice. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  12. ^ "The Rumpus Three-Way Interview: An Incomplete Catharsis". The Rumpus.net. 2015-09-07. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  13. ^ "Year in Review: Creative Writing Pedagogy « pleiadesmag". Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  14. ^ "Matthew Salesses". Tin House. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  15. ^ "Faculty". Kundiman. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  16. ^ Babendir, Bradley [@therealbradbabs] (January 17, 2023). "simply one of the most insane documents i've ever seen posted on here" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 18 January 2023. Retrieved 2 March 2024 – via Twitter.
  17. ^ Molly, Bradley (January 2023). "A Writer Whose One Weird Trick Can Ruin Any Piece Of Writing, And More Of This Week's 'One Main Character'". Digg. Archived from the original on 27 January 2023. Retrieved 2 March 2024.
  18. ^ Lanum, Nikolas (19 January 2023). "Columbia professor reverses course on race and gender contract after coming under fire". Fox News. Archived from the original on 24 January 2023. Retrieved 2 March 2024.
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