Matthew J. Kirby

Matthew J. Kirby is an American author of middle-grade and young-adult fiction from Utah, now living in Idaho. He holds a bachelor's degree in history from Utah State University and a master's in school counseling, and has said that reading Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books as a preteen inspired him to become a writer. His debut novel, The Clockwork Three (2010), is a historical fantasy set in a fictional nineteenth-century American city; Icefall (2011), about a Viking princess sheltering from war, won the 2012 Edgar Award for Juvenile Fiction. Kirby has also written the Dark Gravity Sequence trilogy and media tie-in fiction, including the Last Descendants series, Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Geirmund's Saga, and a Diablo IV novel, as well as the standalone Star Splitter (2023).