M A T T R Y D E E N

Matt is a queer Midwestern visual artist and writer exploring the strange resonance of childhood, the echoes we inherit, and the stories that refuse to stay buried. His fiction lingers in the quiet spaces between people, blending emotional precision with a subtle, unsettling edge. His writing appears in numerous literary journals and magazines, where readers enjoy its lyrical restraint and disquieting intimacy.

He is currently at work on House of Carnivál, a dreamy coming‑of‑age young adult novel set within a queer traveling carnival that drifts throughout the American Southwest, where borders—real or imagined—can’t contain who you are. Beneath the carnival’s romantic, old‑world magic lies a darker mystery: haunted artifacts, a sinister collector, and a town whose bigotry turns violent.