Matthew Salesses

Salesses was born in South Korea and adopted by 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 English at Coe College.[5]

Salesses is the bestselling author of the novel The Hundred-Year Flood (Little A, 2015).[6] He is also the author of Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear: A Novel (Little A, 2020); Craft in the Real World (Catapult Books, 2021); 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).[7]

In 2015 Buzzfeed named him one of 32 Essential Asian American Writers.[8] His essays have been published in Best American Essays 2020,[9] NPR Code Switch,[9] The New York Times Motherlode,[10] Glimmer Train,[11] and VICE.com.[12] He has received awards and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference[13] and Mid-American Review.[10]

For years, he wrote about fiction craft and pedagogy for the Pleiades blog,[14] where he was the Website Editor. He has taught at Tin House[15] and Kundiman.[16]