Bio
When he isn’t building cool forts for a living and trying to be the best dad possible, Matthew “Mateo” Monda fancies himself a writer. From his very first work, O what a dae to his Untitled Awesome Screenplay, Monda demonstrates a unique ability to draw the reader into his twisted, little world and hold him or her hostage all the way through to the last page. Highlights in his career include some clever cast signings and several B pluses and A minuses on essays.
Things really got exciting when Monda became a columnist for The Daily of the University Washington (1989–1991), where he is rumored to have received more hate mail than anyone. In 1992, Monda took a trip to Mexico where he was inexplicably detained for the better part of fifteen years. During that time, Monda again took up the pen, or “pluma,” as they call it down there, and wrote a column and a bunch of filler for the alternative newspaper, El Diablito (2005–2006), which he also co-published.
Upon his release from Mexico (2006–2007), Monda returned to his natal Seattle, where he took some time off to write Midtown Madhatter, which he immediately shelved after a rejection notice or two, and spent some time and too much money touring Colombia (2008), the first leg of a multi-country tour that in the end only included Colombia. During that time, Monda published Citizen X, an online, interactive, alternative newspaper that nobody else really wanted to interact with.
When he resurfaced in Seattle in 2009, Monda attempted to revive El Diablito as an online, interactive, alternative newspaper for the Latino community in the Puget Sound area, only to realize that first-generation Latino immigrants aren’t much for reading…and that second-generation Latino immigrants aren’t much for reading in Spanish.
Monda got his mojo back when a former colleague from The Daily stalked him on Facebook (2017) and asked if he were still writing. He sent her a copy of Midtown Madhatter, which she immediately edited and promptly returned to him. But it wasn’t until Monda was shooting the shit with his office neighbor, owner, and operator of a publishing company, and mentioned that he had written a novel, that things got serious (2018).
