Matthew Burnside

Matthew Burnside is an American writer and educator. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, his work has appeared in Best American Experimental Writing, Kill Author, Los Angeles Review, PANK, Hobart, Gargoyle, and other venues. He is the author of Wiki of Infinite Sorrows (KERNPUNKT), Postludes (KERNPUNKT), Rules to Win the Game (Spuyten Duyvil), Meditations of the Nameless Infinite (Robocup Press), and several chapbooks including Escapologies (Red Bird), Book of If & Ever (Red Bird), and Infinity’s Jukebox (Passenger Side Books). He is also the author of a number of new media projects, such as the serial digital novel Dear Wolfmother (Heavy Feather Review), Writer: The Game, and In Search Of: A Sandbox Novel (Best American Experimental Writing). He has taught at the University of Iowa, Wesleyan University, and Hollins University. He was born in Texas.

Early Life
Matthew grew up in McKinney, Texas

Goals
In "A Parting Letter to My Creative Writing Students", Burnside writes of his belief in writing as "a means of helping others to make sense out of their own gnawing loneliness, grief, misery, madness . . . a way of reaching one’s hands across the careless void to haunt your readers with love—a depth of decency, empathy, understanding of which perhaps they didn’t even know they were deserving."

Inspirations
Matthew is interested in the ways human beings, especially children, prove resilient amidst the ordinary horrors of life on Earth.

Recent Publications
“¤ Clockwork Melancholies ¤” Flash Fairy Tale, GASHER Journal “Meditations on an Echo in a Cave - Part I: A Brief History of the Coffee / Tea Break in Nintendo’s Mother Series, Writing as Getting Lost, Bombs, Wolves, Wax Jesus, & The Art of Pretending to Pray,” Nonfiction, Grimoire “Young Escher Reconsiders the Human Heart as a Series of Tessellations Unspooling Toward Eternity” + “All of Tomorrow’s Rust is Electric,” Prose Poems, No Contact “∂ TETHERLINGS ∂” + “₾ PILGRIMAGE ₾ ,” Flash Fairy Tales, Lammergeier “Postlunar Lovesong,” Poem, Pithead Chapel “The Prognosticators,” Story, Okay Donkey