This idea – the fine line between being in on the joke and being the joke itself – was at the forefront of my mind as I wrote my debut novel, Black Buck, which is described as “a hilarious, razor-sharp skewering of America’s workforce; a … crackling debut that explores ambition and race”. Race. America. Work. These are concepts that come with necessary seriousness, and also serious absurdity.

— Black Buck’s Mateo Askaripour: ‘I didn’t hesitate on injecting humour’, The Big Issue

When I made the move from the world of startups and sales to the literary industry, this need to innovate and disrupt didn’t wane but only increased, especially when I realized that while there is a rich tradition of Black and brown American writers, our stories have not been prioritized, promoted, and praised in the ways they should be.

— 10 Books that 'Disrupted' the Literary Status Quo, Goodreads

Every book has a rhythm, and I’m not just talking about how words shimmy, strut, and slide across the page. If you read closely enough, you’ll pick up on the beat, switches, and variations of volume, but even if you can’t hear it, it’s there. This is all to say that music is at the core of my novel, my writing process, and my very being.

— Mateo Askaripour's Playlist for His Novel "Black Buck", largehearted boy

I woke up next to Queen Vic this morning. Her name, of course, isn’t Queen Vic, but in an attempt to maintain some privacy about my love life, as I contradictorily discuss it now, she is Queen Vic — named for the East Village bar where, almost a decade ago, we had our first date.

— Author Mateo Askaripour Has a Waffle Routine, New York Magazine

Imagine walking into an art gallery—perhaps something you’ve done before. The scattered and colorful brushstrokes of a painting on the wall catches your eye. As you take it in, trying to understand the “essence” of it, the curator stands beside you and whispers, “Breaktaking, isn’t it? It took her a decade to complete.”

— In Favor of Speed: Write Fast, Fix Later, Lit Hub

Success is in the eye of the beholder. For some, it means a nice car, tons of money, and the best of the best. Others may want pure, unadulterated happiness, like an extended-release drug that lasts a lifetime. And a few are brave enough to admit they aren’t sure what it means to them.

— Ten-Point-Five Tips for Success: An Exclusive Guest Post from Mateo Askaripour, Author of Black Buck, B&N Reads

I remember feeling as if I was about to vomit. Sitting smack dab in the middle of an office—open layout, of course, as this was a startup—my foot tapping the hardwood floor, eyes clenched, hand gripping the hard, black plastic phone in my hand as it rang, rang, and rang.

— Move Over, Willy Loman—Literature Needs a New Salesman, Electric Literature

If I were to ask you who Ousmane Sembene was, where he hailed from, what he did, and how he affected the world, chances are you would draw a blank in the same way I did before encountering him.

— Through Films for Black Audiences, Ousmane Sembene Spoke to All, Lit Hub

The video clip, slightly pixelated and shot in black and white, shows two men in the throes of laughter. One, white, leans closer, holding a microphone near his companion’s mouth. The other, Black, who was laughing with his head turned away, exposing a handsome set of teeth, composes himself, facing his interviewer, yet he is unable to hide his boyish smile.

— Falling in Love with Malcolm X—and His Mastery of Metaphor, Lit Hub

Nabokov. Faulkner. Steinbeck. Hemingway. Orwell. Heller. Huxley. Fitzgerald. Vonnegut. Dostoevsky. Camus. Milton. As I dragged my finger from title to title, there was something that connected Lolita to East of Eden to The Plague to A Farewell to Arms to This Side of Paradise, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

— Toward an Expanded Canon of Black Literature, Lit Hub