Occupation Writer Nationality American Notable work King of Shards | Language English Citizenship United States | |
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Genres Fantasy, Science Fiction Nominations Nebula Award for Best Short Story | ||
King of shards by matthew kressel book trailer
Matthew Kressel is a Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominated author and editor. His short stories have been published in Lightspeed Magazine, Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Interzone, Apex Magazine, and other magazines and anthologies. His first novel King of Shards was released in 2015 by Resurrection House. The follow-up novel, Queen of Static, will be published in October 2016. He is one of the founding editors of both the speculative fiction magazine Sybil's Garage and the publishing house Senses Five Press.
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Life
Kressel grew up on Long Island in a conservative Jewish family. He currently lives in Brooklyn.
Kressel worked in downtown Manhattan during the September 11 attacks. He said that prior to the attack he used to "look up at the World Trade Center towers on my way to work and think, 'Those are our pyramids. They’ll be here in a thousand years.' A few weeks later, from that same street, I watched them crumble and was running with a thousand screaming people away from a debris cloud rapidly chasing us. If ever there was a message on the impermanence of things."
Writing
Kressel's first novel, King of Shards, was published in 2015 by Resurrection House. In a review on NPR the novel was called “Majestic, resonant, reality-twisting madness.”
Kessel's short stories have been published in a number of magazines including Lightspeed Magazine, Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Interzone, Apex Magazine, Electric Velocipede, and Nightmare Magazine. Anthologies including his stories are The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, Naked City, After, and The People of the Book.
Kressel's short story "The Sounds of Old Earth" was a finalist for the 2014 Nebula Award for Best Short Story while his story "The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye" was a finalist in the same category in 2015. His short stories have also been named to the Locus Magazine Recommended Reading List.
Kressel co-hosts with Ellen Datlow the Fantastic Fiction reading series at the KGB Bar in New York City.
Editing
In 2003 Kressel co-founded the speculative fiction magazine Sybil's Garage, In 2011 Kressel was nominated for World Fantasy Award in the category of Special Award, Non-Professional for editing Sybil’s Garage.
Kressel also founded Senses Five Press through which he published Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy edited by Ekaterina Sedia, which won the 2009 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology.