MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE is the author, most recently, of Touching the Art, a Washington State Book Award Finalist in 2024 and a Pacific Northwest Book Award Finalist in 2025!

Sycamore’s previous title, The Freezer Door, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, one of Oprah Magazine’s Best LGBTQ Books of 2020, and a Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.

Sycamore is the author of three novels and three nonfiction titles, and the editor of six nonfiction anthologies.

Sycamore’s most recent anthology, Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing up with the AIDS Crisis, is one of BookRiot’s 100 Most Influential Queer Books of All Time.

Sycamore’s most recent novel, Sketchtasy (Arsenal Pulp Press 2018), was one of NPR’s Best Books of 2018. Her memoir, The End of San Francisco (City Lights 2013), won a Lambda Literary Award. And her anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform (AK Press 2012), was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book.

Mattilda's novels include So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights 2008) and Pulling Taffy (Suspect Thoughts 2003). She is the editor of four additional nonfiction anthologies, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Seal 2007), That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull 2004; 2008), Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving (Haworth 2004; Routledge), and Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write about Their Clients (Haworth 2000; Routledge), which also appears in Italian (Effepi Libri 2007).

Mattilda has written for a variety of publications, including the New York Times Book Review, San Francisco Chronicle, BOMB, Bookforum, Boston Review, The Baffler, n+1, Ploughshares, Fence, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Truthout, Utne Reader, AlterNet, Bitch, Bookslut, Denver Quarterly, The Stranger, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. For ten years Mattilda was the reviews editor and a columnist for the feminist magazine Make/shift, and she’s now part of the editorial collective for the Anarchist Review of Books.

Mattilda made a short 16mm film, All That Sheltering Emptiness, in collaboration with Joey Carducci. The film premiered in 2010 at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, and has screened around the world.

Mattilda created Lostmissing, a public art project about the friend who will always be there, and what happens when you lose that
relationship.

Mattilda’s activism has included ACT UP in the early-‘90s, Fed Up Queers in the late-‘90s, Gay Shame, and numerous lesser-known (or even unnamed) groups.

Mattilda's papers are archived at the San Francisco Public Library, and are accessible to the public.

Mattilda lives in Seattle, Washington, and she loves feedback, so contact her, okay?

Mattilda is on Twitter, which she used to love, and still does, sometimes, for the way text can move in and out of context. She’s also on Facebook, Instagram, and now Bluesky.

Mattilda’s next book, Terry Dactyl, her fourth novel, will be published on November 11, 2025 by Coffee House Press in the US, and Cipher Press in the UK—get ready for transcontinental trouble!