| Update (September 2010) Please see this link for more details about The Murderess and the Hangman. I just hope you like murder and mayhem, hangings, detective fiction, a grimy London of the nineteenth century, and a female killer. Hopefully this book brings them all to life.  
The Pride and the Sorrow: Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, 2010 - Second Round! 
On February 25th, The Knight of New Orleans, The Pride and the Sorrow of Paul Morphy made it to the Second Round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, 2010. This surprised me a great deal considering there were 5000 entries in the General Fiction category. I look forward to the quarterfinals at the end of March! To check out my entry - my novel set in New Orleans - please click here.
The Knight of New Orleans: Bookhabit Novel Award - Winner! 
Matt receives a US$5000 prize and is "thrilled" about winning the first Bookhabit competition. We will be posting an interview with Matt on Bookhabit shortly. Congratulations from Bookhabit!
The Pride and the Sorrow: Book Review, June 2008 
New Zealand novelist Geoff Cush, a member of the Bookhabit judging panel, had the following to say about the Bookhabit Award 2008: "What made Matt Fullerty's writing stand out, from the very first sentence, was an unusually strong and individual way with words. Taking us into the vanished world of old America and Europe he uses a highly textured language to give an almost physical experience of being in that place and time. Drawing subtle lines between a society top-heavy with leisure and the profligate genius it produced in Morphy, he holds back the historical and personal reckoning while letting it gather and brood like the storm that finally washes away New Orleans. In my view this makes The Knight of New Orleans, The Pride and the Sorrow of Paul Morphy a stand-out all rounder in the craft of literary fiction.
Paul Morphy, world chess champion
Matt Fullerty page
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The Knight of New Orleans: Bookhabit Award 2008
Please click the cover to read about the award:
You can hear the Bookhabit PodCast (a 23-minute interview) with Matt by clicking here.
Matt Fullerty: Writer Biography
Matt Fullerty was born in Warrington, England and educated at Oxford University (B.A. English) and the University of East Anglia (M.A. Creative Writing), and has a Ph.D. in English from the George Washington University in Washington, DC.
The Pride and the Sorrow: Press Release Paul Morphy's story is a rites of passage tale about a boy who becomes famous by playing chess. It is also a cautionary tale about New Orleans, family pride and a mind who cannot cope with the real world...The Pride and the Sorrow is a cross between Josh Waitzkin's Searching for Bobby Fischer (about a chess prodigy) and Vladimir Nabokov's The Luzhin Defense (about chess causing madness). Paul resists gambling and dueling and despite Morphy family rivalries he takes on the Europeans at their own game. But the red-light district and temptations on the other side of New Orleans are never far away...
The Pride and the Sorrow: Interview, June 2008 
A 23-minute interview with Matt is now available here with Clare Tanner of the Bookhabit Show. "Every month over 20,000 listeners download our podcasts for The Bookhabit Show where we tell the author's story behind the story."
The Academic Novel: Ph.D. dissertation My English Ph.D. dissertation is entitled The British and American Academic Novel: The Professorromane, The Comic Campus, The Tragic Self.
Taking my Ph.D. from 2003-2008 at George Washington University in Washington, DC, I became interested in fiction with professors and students as central characters. I undertook a historical study of the academic genre, from the comic novels of David Lodge and Malcolm Bradbury, as well as Kingsley Amis, to specific studies such as Humbert Humbert in Nabokov's Lolita (1955), and modern fiction by writers including Willy Russell, Tom Sharpe, Michael Chabon, Margaret Edson, Tim O'Brien, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Don DeLillo, Bernard Malamud, Richard Russo and J. M. Coetzee.
For more details about my academic work in British and American literature, specifically my PhD dissertation about the "academic novel," please follow this link.
Matt Fullerty: CV
For my full academic CV, please follow this link.
The Murderess and the Hangman
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See below for a slideshow of images from my novels. | | The Murderess and the Hangman
The Murderess and the Hangman is a story of murder with a twist. It is told from both sides of the scaffold. In 1879 William Marwood, 'gentleman hangman' for London and Middlesex, hanged 'callous murderess' Kate Webster. Her crime? The axe-murder of her landlady, Mrs Julia Thomas, in the leafy suburb of Richmond, London.
 But is everything as clear as it seems? Certainly she is guilty, as we are told the story from both Kate's and Marwood's points of view. But when you set what Marwood does for a living against Kate's struggle in life, is there any room for forgiveness, understanding, redemption even? And what of the hangman who coolly moves from one execution to the next?
Main characters Marwood was a professional hangman, Kate a thief attracted by the tales he tells of his past hangings - hardly the most usual of romances! Both Marwood and Kate were really people, and he really did hang her for the crime. But there is no evidence they actually knew each other. I would therefore term my novel speculative fiction, faction, or a fantasy built on fact.
In addition to these characters, I wanted to explore the nature of the victim, Mrs Julia Thomas, as well as the police detectives - the new officers of the Bow Street Runners - here Inspector Gil Sequin and Nimrod Jones, as they pursue Kate across London, England, and eventually Ireland - in order to bring her to hangman William Marwood.
The Noose 
A common hangman or "Jack Ketch" blames his tools. S'blood and death. England must have its justice, and as any good Jack Ketch would say: "Toe the line, swing for us, and do the dance of death!"
The Trial  This image shows the top of the Old Bailey Criminal Court where Kate Webster famously went on trial for the murder of Mrs Julia Thomas.
In 1879 murder was executed with blood and laughter. The noose hangs above our heads, all our lives. Matt Fullerty is currently writing The Murderess and the Hangman.
American X Trilogy:
American Con Artist (Part I)
American Sophomore (Part II) American Author (Part III)
American Con Artist
American Sophomore 
American Sophomore is a biographical novella about James Hogue. Hogue was a conman who tricked his way into Princeton University under a false identity. But he was also a runner talented, but his expectations were so high that he kept seeking perfection. This compulsion led to Hogue assuming various false identities and casting himself frequently as younger than he was – all to reach a pinnacle of physical and intellectual self-esteem.
American Author (Part III)
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