Matthew Eck's debut novel, The Farther Shore, hit bookstores this fall. Eck '01, the winner of the Milkweek National Fiction Prize, has garnered high praise for his work.
Walter Kirn, a novelist and critic who lives in Montana, writes that Eck “is a natural novelist and a war novelist by accident. His book is ghostly, lyrical and strange in the style of the young Tim O’Brien.” He adds, “This is the first novel that I’ve read to capture today’s postmodern political warfare, waged in the inexplicable locales for even more inexplicable reasons and with rules of engagement that make no sense.”
Novelist and Kansas City native Whitney Terrell writes, “It is no accident that Matthew Eck’s outstanding novel transports his American characters into a landscape — and a moral universe — that seems only a border crossing away from Camus’ Algeria. This novel is a blazing record of the future and of Eck’s exceptional abilities as a novelist.”
Eck enlisted in the Army in 1992 and served in Somalia and Haiti. After returning home, he earned a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature from Wichita State, where he also worked as a student editorial assistant with The Shocker, and then went on to earn a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Montana.
He lives with his wife, Katie, in Kansas City and teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Central Missouri.
