Matt Ortile

Instructor & Writer
Profile Photo

Matt Ortile is the author of the essay collection The Groom Will Keep His Name and the co-editor of the nonfiction anthology Body Language. He is also the executive editor of Catapult magazine and was previously the founding editor of BuzzFeed Philippines. He has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and MacDowell; has taught workshops for Kundiman, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and PEN America; and has written for Esquire, Vogue, Condé Nast Traveler, Out magazine, and BuzzFeed News, among others. He is a graduate of Vassar College, which means he now lives in Brooklyn.

Classes

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Stories

Cover Photo: Screenshot via Nintendo
I Can’t Defeat My Grief, But I’m Learning to Carry It

In video games, dead parent storylines give a character depth. Their grief becomes a plot point, something to overcome.

Feb 22, 2021
Cover Photo: photograph of a gold-framed photograph of the author as a child, with his mother, on a shelf also containing a clock and a wooden jewelry box with a vase and framed art behind
My Mother Lives Here Because I Live Here

It was the middle of a pandemic. Mom had just died of cancer. Why leave my home of four and a half years?

Jan 20, 2021