Press

The Stonewall Book Awards from the American Library Association has named Hide one of its Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor Books!

Hide is the winner of the fourth annual Crook's Corner Book Prize for best debut novel set in the American South! Check out the news here and here.

Hide is on the longlist for the PEN America/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction!

Booklist names Hide one of the Top Ten First Novels of 2016.

Hide is a finalist for the Crook's Corner Book Prize for the best debut novel set in the American South.

Check out Matthew's essay "It's Time Fiction Reflected Gay Married Life" in The Guardian!

Hide is the Pat Kenny Show and Eason Book Club's Book of the Month for August!

Hide makes the March Indie Next List.

Hide is one of Amazon's Best Books of the Month for February!

Hide has been selected as one of the best debuts of Winter/Spring 2016 for the American Booksellers Association's Indies Introduce program! 

Interviews with Late Night Library, Shelf Awareness, and Deep South Magazine.

Matthew shares a playlist for Hide at LargeHearted Boy and what he's been reading with BookPage.

Out and About Nashville says Hide is "sure to spark conversation."

Check out "The First Summer," an excerpt from Hide, now available in Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, with an introduction by Stuart Nadler, author of The Inseparables.

Reviews

"Something like a small miracle: a bittersweet portrait of love in the shadows." –  Booklist, starred review

“A hopeful plea delivered through fiction that same-sex couples might grow old peacefully together, enjoying the same freedoms as their straight counterparts. But Hide can't be reduced to a social-justice tale, or one of love between gay men. It's a story about the kind of love that endures beyond youth, strength and memory. It's about the preciousness of the lives couples build together and the heartbreak of losing them.” - Chapter 16/Knoxville News-Sentinel

 “A graceful and understated novel . . . A portrait of a particularly repressive period in gay history.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Griffin’s lush prose lends an aura of a dream.” – The Rumpus

"Forceful... a compassionate portrait of a lifelong love that will linger with readers." - Publishers Weekly

“Sumptuous…. Griffin delivers a novel robust with flavor and brimming with passion.” - Shelf Awareness

"Emotionally wrenching...simply beautiful." - Lambda Literary

“A searing portrait of love and alienation in old age.” - Next Magazine 

"Griffin fills his story with prickly humor and wit... Hide is a book that breaks your heart." - BookPage

"Hide...vividly renders both the challengers that confronted the closeted men and women of the past and the tragic realities facing those same people, the elderly and infirm of today. It's a powerful and affecting debut." - Edge Media Network

"It's absorbing depiction of truly universal struggles at the end of life...will resonate with any reader." - Out and About Nashville.

“Deliberately paced, thoughtful story of men in love over many years against considerable odds…[it] feels genuine, recounting the love of two very different people made to live in fear but who endure with considerable dignity…readers will want to hear more from Griffin.”—Kirkus Reviews

Early Praise

"A masterful novel. Every page aches with life." —Gail Godwin, author of Flora

"Hide is the best debut I've read in years. Not only is it beautifully written, full of humor and heart, but it's that rare literary beast: a serious novel that's a joy to read. Matthew Griffin is an important and welcome new voice of his generation." --John McNally, author of After the Workshop

"Tender, restrained, Hide is the freshly imagined story of a gay male couple who decide to give up the world—friends, family, career—in order to live out their forbidden love in the decades before gay liberation. This is a great love story." —Edmund White, author of Jack Holmes & His Friend

"Some love, pressurized by time, and isolation, and prejudice, turns hard, gem-like, buried in protective rock. In Hide, Matthew Griffin has used his considerable talents to cut into and polish the gemstone, allowing us a glimpse at a remarkable love, a costly love, meanly sparkling, and precious." –  Justin Torres, author of We the Animals

"Tough but compassionate and beautifully observed. A moving story about the persistence of love." —Maggie Shipstead, author of Astonish Me

"This is the rare thing: an important, funny, beautifully observed novel about love. A great debut." --Stuart Nadler, author of Wise Men

"Reading Hide, I kept saying to myself, ‘At last!’: a novel that follows the trajectory of a marriage (in fact if not in name) between two men over the course of decades, and does so with grit, humor, and compassion. Hide is a welcome and important work." —David Leavitt, author of The Two Hotel Francforts

New York Times short documentary about Matthew and Raymie as part of its coverage of the struggle for gay equality in the South. 

Huffington Post coverage of Matthew and Raymie's WE DO Campaign marriage equality action in Morristown, TN. January, 2013.