Biography
Mathew Klickstein grew up in Lake Forest, California.
While still in college, Mathew established the first official Slam Poetry competition to be held on a university campus, and his self-published novel, This Book is Called Counter, quickly became an underground DIY phenomenon across the country.
Immediately after receiving his BFA from the University of Southern California's undergraduate screenwriting program in 2003, he co-created and produced a weekly television show for National Lampoon Networks called Collegetown, USA. He was also head writer and field producer of Collegetown during its first season.
Thereafter, Mathew knocked around in the world of feature film production, meanwhile seeing his articles printed in such publications as: OC Weekly, Fade-In Magazine (hailed as "the Best Movie Magazine of the Year" by the Washington Post during his tenure), Alternative Press Magazine, the UK's ABLE Magazine, and France's Le Magazine Double.
Short stories and articles of Mathew's appeared in sundry online and print publications, as well.
In 2006, Mathew became the Editor-In-Chief of Entertainment Today, Southern California's oldest free-weekly paper (est. 1967). He retired from that post in early 2007, after which time he sold his first screenplay to a small Warner Bros.-based production company. Concurrent with this, Mathew optioned a screenplay to a young independent producer.
During the same period of Mathew's script sales, he was invited to assist a prominent Newport Beach couple with the penning of their harrowing WWII memoirs.
In early 2008, Mathew conceptualized and co-founded clothing line Better Bacon Apparel, a hybrid experiment in fashion that melded the worlds of "high fashion" and "outsider art." The line was on sale in boutiques around the globe, was involved in various high-profile events such as: the 2008 Oscars, the LA Lakers End-of-the-Season Party, and the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, and was featured in Men's Vogue and Elle Magazine.
Mathew is the writer of 2009's Against the Dark, which has the dubious distinction of being Steven Seagal's first horror film, released through Sony Pictures.
After spending five months in Portland, Oregon - where, amongst other creative endeavors, he contributed pieces to the town's Pulitzer Prize-winning alternative weekly, Willamette Week - he was tapped by bestselling author Laurie Graff (You Have to Kiss a Lot of Frogs) to help her adapt to screenplay her latest novel, The Shiksa Syndrome (Doubleday).
Before leaving Portland, Mathew became friendly with the folks at AtomSmashers, a nascent publishing company that specialized in graphic novels and children's books. Mathew's experimental novella Daisy Goes to the Moon was published and distributed by AtomSmashers in 2009.
His 2010 feature-length rockumentary, Act Your Age: The Kids of Widney High Story - involving the adventures of a group of young adults with developmental disabilities in a rock band - screened at various festivals and specialty venues around the country and in the UK. Starting November 2020, a tenth anniversary remastered version of the film began streaming on Troma Now.
Mathew spent 2011/2012 working as an entertainment reporter for Boulder's two daily newspapers - Colorado Daily and the Daily Camera. He also spent his time in Boulder directing and producing projects on such subjects as actress/activist Pam Grier and Hunter S. Thompson's video biographer, Wayne Ewing.
Also in 2012, Mathew worked with the non-profit "disabled theater" group Phamaly (the only theater organization in the country to work exclusively with actors with various disabilities) to accrue funding in order to produce the 25-year-old group's first production based outside of Denver.
This pilot program, "disLabled" - a 90 minute variety show including live music, video projections, comedy sketches, and monologues - was originally conceived by Mathew who co-wrote (along with the actors) and co-directed the show with Phamaly regular Jeremy Palmer. The production premiered at the Dairy Center for the Arts in April of 2012, and each of the three performances sold out.
Shortly before leaving Boulder, Mathew wrote a profile of a local erotic lit publishing company run by two young women - Jordan LaRousse and Samantha Sade - called Oysters & Chocolate. Befriending LaRousse and Sade, Mathew decided to try his hand at the genre. Inspired by the likes of American Psycho, Lolita, and the works of Elfriede Jelinek, Robert Crumb, and Henry Miller, Mathew's black comedy "horrotica" novel Rag Doll was edited by LaRousse and Sade, and published by Oysters & Chocolate in late 2012.
Rag Doll was well-received in the erotic literature community, with Erotic Trade Only Magazine's "Best Erotic Writer (2015)" Kay Jaybee championing its being "oddly appealing and bizarrely imaginative."
Mathew participated in readings of Rag Doll at such venues as a lesbian-led Gay Pride Day event in Denver and at various women's groups events in both Colorado and New York City. After LaRousse and Sade closed their company, Mathew found a publisher in Blushing Books, which in 2013 published Rag Doll through a new, "experimental" imprint called Blushing Edge. In late 2017, a new administration at Blushing Books closed the imprint while updating their catalogue. Rag Doll is at this time no longer available for purchase.
It was in 2012 that Klickstein also contributed two e-books to Boulder startup Oak Creek Press (memoir Back to Hollywood and talking children's book My Dog Forgot How to Read, with Mark Johnston, illustrated by Angie Dobson and voiced by Jill Woodhouse). Oak Creek Press closed its doors in 2017, leaving both e-books unavailable for purchase.
Klickstein's highly-acclaimed oral history of the Nickelodeon network, SLIMED! An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age, was published by Penguin Book Group USA in late 2013. It has since been named to such "Best Of" lists as those compiled by the likes of: Entertainment Weekly, Parade Magazine and Publishers Weekly. An updated 5th anniversary edition of the book, including a new intro by Nick Arcade host Phil Moore, was released by Penguin Random House in late 2019 in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Nickelodeon. Years later, on May 12, 2022, SLIMED! was used as a clue on an episode of Jeopardy!.
Mathew produced and hosted (along with SLIMED! foreword writer and book interviewee Marc Summers) what may to this day be the largest reunion gathering in pop culture history, as part of the book's launch event at the prestigious 92Y culture space in New York City in September, 2013. Nearly 40 "Classic" Nickelodeon personnel attended a series of what became three hours of panels, live music (including the first-ever performance by the Beets, the fictional band from the animated series Doug, comprised of show composers and sound effects gurus Dan Sawyer and Fred Newman) and autograph signings.
Mathew produced and hosted similar events throughout the country and later, in late 2014, toured with the book as part of the Jewish Book Council.
Thanks largely to the travel and remote work afforded by becoming a casting producer for Food Network's popular "restaurant rescue" series Restaurant: Impossible in 2013, Mathew again indulged his wanderlust and began exploring the Midwest. In mid-2014, he ended up in the quaint but quirky and creative town of Lawrence, Kansas.
While in Lawrence, Mathew took part in numerous artistic enterprises, including dipping his toe in the burgeoning comedy scene, quickly being snatched up as a regular feature at a monthly showcase after so doing.
During his two years in Kansas, Mathew created and contributed a regular column to a weekly supplement in Kansas City's daily newspaper the Kansas City Star (Ink) called "Kitchen Conversational" (later renamed to "Kitchen Convo") that had him speaking with various foodie personalities throughout the region.
He produced/hosted a live panel of such personalities during the Free State Festival (an annual, week-long arts and culture festival in Lawrence) in 2016. He concurrently was hired to adapt the recent stage play LA Diner (loosely based on the final days of Marilyn Monroe's life and performed in Boulder/Denver a year earlier) to screenplay, and brought longtime Kansan film professor, musician and filmmaker Jon Niccum onboard to assist with the assignment which they completed; the film is currently in pre-production status.
Another such project while Mathew lived in Kansas involved a live-action theater production of Lord of the Flies as re-imagined by a group of local girls (age 8-16) under the umbrella of local theater group Orange Mouse Theatricals. Mathew ran the six-month long series of three-hour workshops with the girls who worked together to write an entirely original, topical hour-long piece, which they premiered at Lawrence's Cider Gallery as part of a Final Friday art walk event. A follow-up q&a with the writers and cast followed at art/culinary space Culinaria.
Along with his wife whom he met while living in Lawrence, Mathew moved to Baltimore in the summer of 2016 in order to become the senior reporter for the Baltimore Jewish Times, one of the oldest Jewish publications in the country. Seven months later, Mathew sold the proposal for his latest book project and subsequently left his post at the Jewish Times in order to focus on his book.
It was also around this time that Mathew finished his documentary about Marc Summers, On Your Marc, which toured around the country as part of a series of screening/live events throughout the month of October in partnership with such organizations as Alamo Drafthouse. The tour received a great deal of acclaim in local and national publications, including People Magazine, and sold out many venues, totaling a dedicated audience that numbered into the thousands.
Meanwhile, Mathew's new book deal had him co-authoring, with lifetime Simpsons series writer Mike Reiss, Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets, and Outright Lies from a Lifetime Writing for The Simpsons (Harper Collins, 2018). Around this time he also ghostwrote the comedic memoir Being Mr. Skin: 20 Years of Nip Slips, Cheek Peeks, and Fast-Forwarding to the Good Parts before shortly thereafter penning the comedic novel Selling Nostalgia: A Neurotic Novel (both through Post Hill and distributed by Simon & Schuster).
Mathew's first comic book series, You Are Obsolete, is a modern tech twist on the likes of Children of the Corn/Village of the Damned etc., and was published Sept 2019 - Jan 2020 by AfterShock Comics. A trade paperback version of the book was released April 2020, followed by a Spanish translation in June 2021. The story is currently in active development as a TV series.
Klickstein long hosted and co-produced his podcast about "Nerd/Geek Culture" called NERTZ (based on his book Nerding Out: How Pop Culture Ruined the Misfit (Business Weekly, 2018, released exclusively in China). The first episode premiered via WIRED before, starting in June 2020, Heavy Metal Magazine partnered with Klickstein to distribute NERTZ episodes via their streaming and social networks.
In late 2017, Klickstein's wife and he moved back to Boulder where he continued to contribute to various publications and productions, as well as worked in various capacities throughout the community. In February 2020, Klickstein and his wife moved once again to Dayton, Ohio.
His first middle-grade reader, The Kids of Widney Junior High Take Over the World! was released in Sept 2020. The book won an IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Award) for Juvenile Fiction and was also released as an audiobook by Blackstone Audio in late 2021, narrated by Cary Hite. Klickstein's first audiobook original project, So You Need to Decide, involving many of modern comedy's top names (eg Bob Odenkirk, Margaret Cho, and Judy Gold) was additionally released in 2022 in partnership with alt-comedy and UnCabaret impresario Beth Lapides. Vulture listed the book among its "Best Comedy Books of 2022 (This Far)" in late 2022.
In Summer 2021, Klickstein led a writing/theater workshop in Dayton involving children developing their own reimagined version of George Orwell's immortal classic Animal Farm. The group worked under the auspices of local theater organization Dare 2 Defy and created the play collaboratively, Plagiarism Is Fun! The Musical, which ran at the Brightside Music & Events Venue in downtown Dayton August 10 and 11. He again worked with Dare 2 Defy - now called TheatreLab Dayton - on a similar devised theater project with children, this time focusing on a series of intermingled monologues the children named MONSTERS -- From Outer Space!!!.
SiriusXM released Klickstein's six-part oral history/audio documentary of the origins of Comic-Con and fandom, Comic-Con Begins, in late June 2021. His next book for younger readers, So Good to be Bad, was released as an audiobook original by Blackstone Audio in Sept 2021 and lauded by #1 NY Times bestselling author Gordon Korman who gushed, "If you like to laugh, this is the GOOD/BAD story for you!"
On Sept 6, 2022, Fantagraphics released a 500-page, full-color (400+ pics/art) major expansion of the Comic-Con Begins audio doc series, See You at San Diego: An Oral History of Comic-Con, Fandom, and the Triumph of Geek Culture. Forewords were written by Stan Sakai (Usage Yojimbo) and Jeff Smith (BONE), with an afterword by Wu-Tang Clan's RZA. The book was also released as an audiobook on the same day by Blackstone with a full cast of voice performers involved.
Mathew Klickstein's graphic novel Daisy Goes to the Moon, based on his 2008 novella originally published by Portland-area upstart AtomSmashers, was illustrated by Rick Geary (creator of the inaugural San Diego Comic-Con logo and cartoonist for the likes of National Lampoon and Heavy Metal Magazine) and published by Fantagraphics in January 2025.
One month later, in February 2025, Klickstein's book Lloyd Kaufman:Interviews was published in hardcover, paperback and e-book editions. The book was the latest installment in University Press of Mississippi's prestigious and long-running Conversations With Filmmakers series.
Klickstein travels frequently around the country to speak and engage with various audiences, communities, conferences, conventions, universities, Jewish Community Centers and other specialized venues talking about all manner of pop culture history, public speaking itself, creative writing, reportage, media analysis and more.
