Matthew Sperling (born 1982) is a British-American novelist and academic.
His first novel, Astroturf, was published in 2018. [1] [2] It was chosen as a best summer book by Joe Dunthorne in The Guardian [3] and as a Book of the Year by Rebecca Tamás in The White Review , [4] and was longlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2019. [5] His second novel, Viral, was published in 2020. [6] It was chosen as Novel of the Week in The Sunday Telegraph [7] and named as a book that should have been on the Booker Prize shortlist in The Irish Times . [8] Sperling was listed among “important male novelists under 40” by James Marriott in The Times in 2020. [9]
Sperling was educated at Gravesend Grammar School and the University of Oxford, and is Associate Professor of Creative and Critical Writing at University College London. [10] He regularly writes about modern art for Apollo magazine. [11] He was a judge for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction in 2020. [12]