Matt Ruff | |
|---|---|
 Ruff in 2018 | |
| Born | (1965-09-08)September 8, 1965 (age 59) Queens, New York City, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Cornell University[1] |
| Notable work | The Mirage,Lovecraft Country |
| Spouse | [1] |
| Website | www |
Matthew Theron Ruff (born September 8, 1965) is an American author of thriller, science fiction andcomic novels, includingThe Mirage andLovecraft Country, the latter having been adapted in 2020 byHBO into aTV series.
Ruff was born inBrooklyn, New York City, in 1965, to aLutheran family ofGerman ancestry.[2] His father was a hospital chaplain, and his maternal grandfather was a missionary.[3] At the age of 5, he decided he wanted to be a fiction writer. He spent his childhood and adolescence learning how to tell stories.[1] In elementary school, he wrote a number of short stories, many of them starring his classmates in scenarios cribbed from movies or TV. Ruff has said that reading these aloud in English class was his first experience performing in front of an audience and his first solid evidence that he had what it took to entertain people with his storytelling.[4]
Many adults around him attempted to persuade him to choose a different career, but Ruff's mother was supportive of his hope to become a writer; for one of Ruff's birthdays, she bought him anIBM Selectric typewriter.[2] From third to eighth grade, Ruff attended aparochial school.[2] He attendedStuyvesant High School inManhattan. One of his teachers there was the memoiristFrank McCourt.[5]
Ruff's first sustained effort at a novel was a soap opera–like story about a family with a lot of children (having only older half siblings, Ruff was fascinated by the concept of siblings). He wrote it in the 1970s, but never published it. Describing it, Ruff said "ThinkEight Is Enough withsurreal elements. There was no overall plot, just a series of loosely linked episodes—a chapter about the boys and girls digging competing tunnel systems under the house would be followed by one in which they got infected by some weird flu strain and started passing out in the halls. Periodically I’d set aside what I’d written and start the whole thing over again".[4]
During Ruff's last semester atCornell University, his mother died. He graduated in 1987. One of Ruff's English professors had beenAlison Lurie, who helped Ruff find an agent.[6]
His father died after Ruff's first novel was published.[2]
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ruff wrote afantasy novel that he never completed. Between 1982 and 1984, Ruff wrote asemi-autobiographical novel about aLutheranMinister's son who questions his faith. Part of Ruff's motive for writing the novel was to let his parents know he wasn't going to be a devout Christian, which they had hoped he would.[4]
In 1985, Ruff wrote acoming-of-age story set in Queens called "Today's Tom Sawyer", over the summer between hissophomore and junior years at Cornell. It had upwards of 400 pages, which Ruff wrote in three months. Ruff based a character in the story on a female student in his class, and gave her a copy of the finished manuscript.[4]
Ruff's first novel,Fool on the Hill, is a fantasy that drew on his experiences living inRisley Residential College at Cornell. It was first written as his senior thesis in Honors English.[7] It was published shortly after Ruff graduated from the university.
His second book,Sewer, Gas & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy, ispostcyberpunk.
His third book,Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls, focuses on two protagonists displaying a fictionalized version ofdissociative identity disorder; while not technically science fiction, it nonetheless contains significant speculative elements.[citation needed]
Set This House in Order was long-listed for the 2005International Dublin Literary Award and won the 2007James Tiptree, Jr. Award, aPNBA Book Award, and aWashington State Book Award. Ruff is also the recipient of a 2006National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Prose[8]
Bad Monkeys received the 2008Washington State Book Award for Fiction, aPNBA Book Award, and anAlex Award.
The Mirage was nominated for theSidewise Award for Alternate History.[9]
Lovecraft Country was nominated for theWorld Fantasy Award in 2017 in the Novel category.
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