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Matthew Gavin Frank

“Sometimes, the essay needs to call out and re-examine our cultural narratives (and their desire to simplify the world for us) as illusory.  To call attention to the mess.  To restore a false simplicity to its innate complexity.  To agitate our readers’ expectations rather than to confirm them (as well as our own).  I suppose there’s both reward and challenge in forsaking easy, comforting answers, and instead embracing mystery.  Sometimes I have trouble separating these lines of thinking from the processes of writing and just plain general living. ”

NPR Best Books of the Year

New York Times Editor’s Choice

The Art of Eating Prize Finalist

 

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“[A] rumination on brutality and resistance in the mines of South Africa. . . .The material in general — ghost towns, corporate cruelty, the centuries-old relationship between humans and a species almost magical in its abilities — is fabulous.”
— The New York Times on Flight of the Diamond Smugglers
“Intriguing.... With great eloquence, Matthew Gavin Frank weaves his personal losses into a riveting cultural tapestry. If Flight of the Diamond Smugglers induces justified discomfort about the dirty business of diamonds, it also rewards with a panoramic view of an ancient and mysterious trade.”
— NPR
“Never has a country-spanning food romp felt this subversive. Frank’s essays—which dissect signature dishes from all 50 states—are nothing short of brilliant…. [A]n exploration of humanity, life, and tastes, the book is delicious.”
— Entertainment Weekly on The Mad Feast
“This is potent stuff, a demi-glace, if you will, that has been reduced down, unnecessary words struck from the page to offer prose akin to poetry, dense and evocative…. A bravado performance…. [The Mad Feast] is a very good book, and one that provides the sense of literary adventure that struck me when I first read the opening lines of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer…. Mr. Frank is not ‘mad’ as the title might imply, nor is he perversely calculating. He feels his way along his travels and connects one notion to another until he develops a literary skein that vibrates with passion. That, I suppose, is a pretty good definition of writing, the good kind.”
— The Wall Street Journal
“Slyly charming. . . stunning writing and perversely wonderful research. . . .Alluring. It’s hard to imagine a better book about not entirely understanding giant squids.”
— The New York Times on Preparing the Ghost
“[A] slyly charming book-length essay… The connections between all these themes―giant squids, Poppa Dave, ice cream―are fragile, but for the most part, Frank knows just how much weight they can bear. And there is some stunning writing and perversely wonderful research along the way… Alluring. It’s hard to imagine a better book about not entirely understanding giant squids.”
— New York Times Book Review onPreparing the Ghost
“This engaging memoir chronicles the unusual route the author and his wife took to mental rehabilitation after Frank’s mother’s grueling, months-long battle with cancer: they took up residence on a medical-marijuana farm in Northern California. . . . A highly entertaining tale.”
— Booklist on Pot Farm
“Aaahhh . . . ! Here are all the joys of being young and exuberant and passionate and in love with women, and life, and better yet . . . in Barolo. This remarkable and enchanting tale makes me want to set the clock back many years and to book passage to Italy and to the sips of the world’s greatest wine, and to be inspired by all the things that make life such a wonderful journey! Kudos to Matthew Gavin Frank for reminding us what really makes life worth living!”
— Charlie Trotter on Barolo

Matthew Gavin Frank is the author of five books of nonfiction, and three books of poetry. His most recent book of nonfiction is Flight of the Diamond Smugglers: A Tale of Pigeons, Obsession, and Greed Along Coastal South Africa (Liveright, 2022), an NPR Best Book of the Year and finalist for the Heartland Booksellers Award in Nonfiction. His next book is Submersed: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines, to be published by Pantheon in June 2025.

His other works of nonfiction include The Mad Feast: An Ecstatic Tour Through America’s Food ( Liveright, 2015), selected as a Staff Pick by The Paris Review, a Best Book of 2015 by Ploughshares, The Millions, and Paste Magazine, and featured in The Wall Street Journal, Saveur, and Entertainment Weekly, Preparing the Ghost: An Essay Concerning the Giant Squid and Its First Photographer (Liveright, 2014), a New York Times Editors' Choice, an NPR Notable Book, and a New Yorker Book to Watch Out For, Pot Farm (The University of Nebraska Press, 2012), and Barolo (The University of Nebraska Press, 2010). His poetry collections are The Morrow Plots (Black Lawrence Press, 2013), Warranty in Zulu (Barrow Street Press, 2010), and Sagittarius Agitprop (Black Lawrence Press, 2009).

 His work appears widely in journals and magazines, including The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Guernica, The New Republic, Iowa Review, Salon, Conjunctions, The Believer, The Normal School, The Best Travel Writing anthologies, The Best Food Writing anthologies, The Poetry Foundation, and as Notable selections in The Best American Essays anthologies. 

He was asked in an interview, as an acclaimed author of both nonfiction and poetry, how he combines these distinct elements into what is known as the “lyric essay”? He responded: “In the past, there was a real disconnect for me between the process of writing a poem, and the process of writing prose.  Not so much anymore.  As with the writing of poetry, much of the energy that fuels the writing of my essays is derived from the attempt to find the perfect ingredients necessary to bridge seemingly dissimilar bits of subject matter.  It’s wonderful: as writers, we have the power to manipulate connections between just about anything, no matter how seemingly dissimilar.  It just takes research, contemplation, imaginative alchemy, and the P.I.-style investigation to uncover that perfect “bridge” ingredient.”

After spending seventeen years in the restaurant industry, he’s now a professor of creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts Program at Northern Michigan University, where he is also the Nonfiction/Hybrids Editor of the literary magazine, Passages.

 

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