Biography

M. T. Anderson has written stories for adults, picture books for children, adventure novels for young readers, graphic novel adaptations of ancient French tales, and several books for older readers (both teens and adults). His satirical book Feed was a Finalist for the National Book Award and was the winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize. Both Time Magazine and National Public Radio have included it on their lists of the best 100 YA novels of all time. Another satirical science fiction novel, Landscape with Invisible Hand, has been turned into a movie starring Tiffany Haddish and Asante Blackk.

The first volume of Anderson’s Octavian Nothing saga, The Pox Party, won the National Book Award and the Boston Globe / Horn Book Prize. The second volume, The Kingdom on the Waves, was a New York Times best-seller. Anderson’s fantasy about a magical dog in the hills of Vermont, Elf Dog & Owl Head, was a Newbery Honor book for 2023 and a finalist for both the Vermont Book Award and the New England Book Award. The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, a tragicomic spy story for young goblins written with Newbery-Honor winner Eugene Yelchin, was a Finalist for the National Book Award in 2018.

Anderson’s nonfiction book Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad was long-listed for the National Book Award. He has published stories for adults in literary journals like McSweeney’s, The Northwest Review, The Colorado Review, and Conjunctions. Several of his stories have appeared in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror collections. His nonfiction articles and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Slate, and Salon. He has curated concerts that bring together text and classical music all over New England.

Anderson was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was raised in the nearby town of Stow. He has a BA from Cambridge University in England and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. For many years he taught at Vermont College of the Fine Arts. He is a lifelong New Englander and lives in a small, haunted 18th century house in the hills of Vermont.

He writes: “I love writing for younger readers. I love their passion. I love their commitment to stories. I love the way their heads are exploding with all the things they want to say and do. Thanks to them – and to you! – for reading the things I’ve written.”

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