Matthue Roth

Matthew "Matthue" Roth (born June 30, 1978) is an American author, poet, columnist, spoken word performer, video game designer, and screenwriter.

During the 2000s, he performed at the Intersection for the Arts with Tea, Dave Eggers, and Beth Lisick; at a Chabad menorah lighting event at Justin Herman Plaza with Shlomo Katz and Carlos Santana; the Daniland Talent Showcase alongside the Suicide Kings, Sini Anderson, Carlos Mena, and Aya de Leon; and a 2002 Broadway production of Def Poetry Jam.

He also performed at Solomon Schechter High School of New York and at the Hillel House of Pennsylvania State University.

After a friend gave him a copy of the novel Valencia by author Michelle Tea, Roth found himself drawn to the book's portrayal of San Francisco's subculture and moved to the city, where he lived from 2001 to 2004.

While living in San Francisco, Roth met up with Tea and other former Sister Spit members and began performing poetry and spoken word at local clubs.

Beginning his career as a slam poet in San Francisco, Roth gained attention for his unusual blend of religious themes with frank sexual material, and appeared in the 2002 live Broadway production of Def Poetry Jam.

As a writer, he has written three young adult novels, two children's books, and two memoirs, and has written for The Forward, Tablet, and Jewcy.

He also co-founded the Jewish culture website Hevria, with Elad Nehorai, and the Jewish educational website G-dcast (later BimBam), with Sarah Lefton.

In 2005, Cleis Press published Roth's first full-length book, the memoir Yom Kippur a Go-Go, named for a zine he had written three years prior.

Jason Diamond of Flavorwire later described it as "striking a balance between [Roth's] old-time religious beliefs and modern-world interests, from poetry to hip hop."

That same year, Roth published his first young adult novel, Never Mind the Goldbergs, through Scholastic's PUSH imprint.

While the book was written in six months, it took two years to edit, and Roth encountered difficulty finding a publisher for the book due to its unusual tone and subject matter.

Upon release, the book garnered mixed reception but received the American Library Association Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults award and the New York Public Library Best Book for the Teen Age award.

A release party was held on January 20, 2005, at La Tazza 108 in Philadelphia with musical performances by Juez and E.D. Sedgwick.

Roth subsequently published two more young adult novels, Candy in Action in 2007 and Losers in 2008, on PUSH and Soft Skull Press, respectively.

In 2009, Roth's novel Losers was chosen as a special selection of the American Library Association.

In 2009, Roth and rapper Mista Cookie Jar formed the nerdcore hip hop duo Chibi Vision.

They debuted with The Chanukah Mini-EP and announced a full-length album, The Elements of Style, shortly afterward.

They were featured on a 2011 segment of The Henry Rollins Show on KCRW.

Roth published his first children's book with My First Kafka: Runaways, Rodents, and Giant Bugs, released on June 15, 2013.

Illustrated by Rohan Daniel Eason, the book reinterprets the works of Franz Kafka for a child audience, specifically "The Metamorphosis", "Josephine the Singer, or The Mouse Folk", and "Excursion into the Mountains" from Contemplation.

Roth conceived of the project while reading "Jackals and Arabs" to his two young daughters.

He and Eason re-teamed the following year for The Gobblings, about a lonely boy on a space station who must defeat a race of metal-eating monsters.

In 2014, Roth and his now ex-wife, restaurateur Itta Werdiger-Roth, were included in The Jewish Week ' s "36 Under 36", a list of influential young Jews under age 36.

Roth's parents were both teachers.

While he was raised in a Conservative Jewish family and participated in an Orthodox youth group, he was largely nonreligious for several years and was an anarchist in high school.

Roth's parents bought him a computer when he was 13, which he used to write for several websites as well as his first novel, Colony One, which he later called "horrible".

When he was 14, a female friend of his was sexually assaulted, which he later said "kind of sent me into a tailspin...I was like, this is male sexuality and male sexuality is violent and I don’t want a part of that...One of the only safe spaces that I found was hanging around queer people."

The memory loosely inspired his later young adult novel, Rules of My Best Friend's Body.

Roth graduated from George Washington University, where he studied anthropology and religion.

During this time, he developed a deeper interest in Judaism and joined a daily minyan on campus.

He also began growing peyos while studying abroad at Charles University in Prague.

After graduation, Roth remained in Washington, D.C. and worked as a sociological trend consultant, but was unsatisfied with his social life there and "desperately wanted to get out."

Roth published a new young adult novel, Rules of My Best Friend's Body, in 2017.

The novel, about a teenage boy whose female friend is sexually assaulted, was originally intended for publication through Fig Tree Books, but Roth ended up self-publishing, and the book was made available for both free online download and physical order.

Roth conducted a public reading of the book at Jefferson Market Library.

Roth released Somehow I Have Built A Nest, a micro-chapbook and collection of poems published through Ghost City Press as part of their Summer 2021 series.

Like his previous novel, Somehow I Have Built A Nest was made available for free online.

In February 2022, Roth spoke as part of a symposium on "Jewish Writing vs. Writing by Jews", moderated by Goldie Goldbloom for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference in Tampa, Florida.

In 2018, Roth's short story "One Part Finger" was shortlisted for the Best American Short Stories.