“At Filipino weddings, the grooms wear white.”
The Groom Will Keep His Name is an essay collection about sex, power, and the myths of American society. BuzzFeed called the book “witty and insightful.” Oprah said it’s one of many queer books that are “changing the literary landscape in 2020.” My ex-boyfriends asked, “Am I in it?”
Read it to find out.
If you want to read Groom, but live outside the US, there’s also an ebook.
You can get it on your Kindle or Nook; it’s also on Apple Books, Google Play, and Kobo. (These are your best bets if you live in the Philippines.)
There’s also an audiobook, if you’d rather listen to me talk for nine hours. And for what it’s worth, the paperback is available in the UK, Australia, Canada, Singapore, and France.
Folks seem to like Groom so far:
“An intellectually ambitious, politically engaged, ideologically sensitive memoir.”
“A whip-smart essay collection explores the intersection of race, sexuality and identity through the lens of one queer immigrant's personal history.”
— Shelf Awareness, starred review
“Weaving stories together about his life and the history of the marginalized communities he belongs to, Ortile seamlessly brings readers into the intersections of his experiences.”
“Ortile’s writing is insightful and honest, giving readers a window into a world with which they may not be familiar.”
— Library Journal, starred review
“A summer read that’s as heady with dreamy desire as it is clear-eyed about the politics undergirding why we want the people we want.”
It’s pronounced “or-TEE-lay.”
And here’s my standard third-person bio:
Matt Ortile is the author of the essay collection The Groom Will Keep His Name and the co-editor of the nonfiction anthology Body Language. He is an editor for print and digital, as well as a columnist, at Condé Nast Traveler, and was previously the executive editor of Catapult magazine and the founding editor of BuzzFeed Philippines. He has written for Esquire, Vogue, Out, Self, BuzzFeed News, and elsewhere; has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and MacDowell; and has taught writing classes at Kundiman, PEN America, and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. He is a graduate of Vassar College, which means he now lives in Brooklyn, where he is working on a novel.
Need to get in touch?
If you want to get a review copy of Groom, conduct an interview, or host me for an event, that’s awesome! You can contact my publicist Brooke Parsons.