Matthew Quick

Quick was a finalist for the TIME 100 most influential people of 2013.

Quick grew up in Oaklyn, New Jersey and graduated from Collingswood High School. He has a degree in English literature and secondary education from La Salle University and an MFA from Goddard College. Quick taught high school literature in southern New Jersey for several years, before leaving his job as a tenured English teacher in Haddonfield, New Jersey to write his first novel while living in Collingswood. Quick lived in Massachusetts for several years; he and his wife, novelist and pianist Alicia Bessette, now live on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from La Salle in 2013.

Quick was finalist for a 2009 PEN/Hemingway Award, and his work has been translated into several languages. In 2012, his young-adult novel, Boy 21, was reviewed favorably by The New York Times.

Matthew Quick (born October 23, 1973) is an American writer of adult and young adult fiction. His debut novel, The Silver Linings Playbook, became a New York Times bestseller and was adapted as a movie of the same name starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, with Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, and Chris Tucker.