Matthew J. Hefti

Fiction Editor

Matthew J. Hefti is an author and attorney in Houston, Texas. Hefti’s debut novel, A Hard and Heavy Thing (Gallery / Simon & Schuster, 2016) was named one of the Top Ten Books of the year by Military Times and one of the Top Ten First Novels of the year by Booklist. It was chosen by the Women’s National Book Association as a Great Group Read. A Hard and Heavy Thing was also awarded the Wisconsin Library Association’s Outstanding Achievement. Hefti has contributed fiction and nonfiction to print anthologies such as The Road Ahead: Fiction from the Forever War (Pegasus Books, 2017), Retire the Colors (Hudson Whitman, 2016), MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2014), and others. His literary criticism and essays have appeared on websites such as Literary Hub, Electric Literature, and many others. A veteran of four combat tours, he spent twelve years in the US military as an explosive ordnance disposal technician. He is a co-founder and fiction editor at Wrath-Bearing Tree.