David Matlin is a novelist, poet, and essayist. His collections of poetry include the books China Beach, Dressed in Protective Fashion, and Fontana's Mirror. His first novel, How the Night is Divided, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1993.
Prisons: Inside the New America from Vernooykil Creek to Abu Ghraib (North Atlantic Books, 2005), is based on a ten-year experience teaching in one of the oldest Prison Education Programs in the nation in New York State. It Might Do Well With Strawberries (Marick Press, 2008) is a new narrative hybrid with a focus on the years 2004–2005 and the crisis of the new century. The author's newest book, A HalfMan Dreaming (Red Hen Press, 2012), mixes voices, events, ghost and ghost worlds and lets these tapestries surface once more in their immense suggestions. A HalfMan Dreaming is a vision of the Enola Gay, cauldrons of glamorous malignancies, beauty, abduction, and the fragile extremities this novel includes in its longing for a new kind of story-life.
David Matlin is a professor in San Diego State University's Department of English and its MFA Creative Writing program.
