David Matlin, Phd '81

Serving good time

Ten years in prison left novelist, poet and essayist David Matlin (PhD, ’81) unprepared for what he found in a college classroom.

Matlin hadn’t served time himself. He’d spent 10 years as a teacher in an in-house prison educational program. Students in the maximum-security facility where he taught were veterans--“horribly wounded and disoriented”--thieves, thugs and other felons for whom the program was a last chance. “They were the most unusual and brilliant people,” he says. “Of the 16 men in the master’s program, 13 or 14 were already publishing in refereed journals.”

Upon leaving the program, though, and taking a job at the University of Oklahoma as a visiting artist, Matlin felt as if he’d been “on an asteroid for 10 years.” He realized he didn’t know what to say to his creative writing class full of young adults because he’d spent 10 years teaching prisoners. ”I broke into a cold sweat,” he recalls. “I had to re-wire everything I knew. I couldn’t address these people in the same way I’d addressed men in prison.”

His experiences in the prison education program led him to write Prisons: Inside the New America from Vernooykill Creek to Abu Ghraib. The book painted a portrait of the men he’d taught but also examined how the American prison industry changed the face of rural America and then spread beyond the country’s borders. Matlin’s work, however, ranges far beyond non fiction.

Fellowship Poet

Matlin changed the course of his life when, at the age of 26, he took his poetry and works of criticism to poet Robert Creeley to read. Creeley subsequently offered Matlin a chance to come to UB on a fellowship, even though Matlin held no degree. In Buffalo, he remembers, “I read as much as I could in English and other cultures’ literatures. That offered me a foundation and, along with the conversation, mentorship and support I found at UB, continues to be one of the most positive experiences for me as an artist.”

After UB, Matlin and his wife Gail Schneider (MFA, ‘73) lived on and off in New York City for some 16 years. He continued writing but worked in construction, trucking and other assorted fields to avoid academia, which he distrusted. Though he’d initially focused on poetry, Matlin in his early 40s moved toward prose and novels. “I had always wanted to write a novel,” he says, “because I saw the novel as a form and object where I could find a new utterance. I felt the novel was a vessel that beckoned me.”

Novelist and professor

Matlin’s first novel, How the Night is Divided, was nominated for a National Book Circle Critics Award and tells in an unusual narrative formation the story of a group of Jewish radicals and a Kiowa who comes into their world. Other works include the novel It Might Do Well with Strawberries and A HalfMan Dreamer, a part fiction/part daily chronicle of the years 2004 and 2005. Grounded in Matlin’s prison experience, the book is sprinkled with phenomenon like the “Z Machine,” discoveries in Paleolithic art, political incidents, and more. In it, says Matlin, “I’m just thinking about our days and not only how bewildering they are but also how unlike they are from any preceding generation’s. We remain speechless before what’s happening to us all.”

Other works include Rooster and Leroy and Other Stories, a collection of novellas and short stories, and China Beach and Dressed In Protective Fashion, collections of poetry.

For the last 10 years, Matlin has taught in San Diego State University’s MFA program, creating courses that not only educate but also “fascinate me personally. In one instance, I taught a yearlong course on William Blake.” He’s also about to write the third novel in his trilogy that includes A HalfMan Dreaming and How the Night is Divided.

Says Matlin, “I’m not done with my work yet.”

--Grace Lazzara, March 2008

Read about other interesting UB alumni, at http://alumni.buffalo.edu/profiles.html.

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