Michael Matewauk

Michael Matewauk was born in San Francisco one year before the "Summer of Love" and regrets being too young to remember much of anything. Literary events which influenced him (in no particular order) include:

1. Visiting his cousin Nancy and squirreling away every volume of her Nancy Drew collection, visit by visit, to be read in the back of parents' car, on the way home.

2. Falling asleep on his dad's lap as a boy, hearing/feeling the rich timbre of his voice through his chest as he read bedtime stories.

3. Winning a contest sponsored by the local paper to write a fictitious classified ad. His entry was a 'Help Wanted Ad' by Ronald Reagan looking for 1000 airline pilots (80s labor dispute anybody?). He was fourteen and the tickets he won to Great America have been the most rewarding thing he's ever received for being a writer.

4. The particular hush/mysterious buzz in middle-school whenever a new Judy Blume book would circulate through class.

5. Taking a ten-day tour to Hawaii with UC Berkeley alumni and Robert Hirst, General Editor of the Mark Twain Archive, to explore Twain's 1860s stint on the islands, which helped catapult him onto the national literary scene.

6. Seeing/reading his work on a kindle for the very first time.