09/11/2026
2026 AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: MAT DEL PAPA
Born and raised in Capreol, Ontario Matthew D. Del Papa didn’t learn to love reading at a young age. In fact, he didn’t learn much of anything when young. It wasn’t until high school that he discovered Science Fiction & Fantasy and that was mostly due to the lack of girls at the all-boy Catholic institution. University opened his eyes — in more ways than one — and widened both his horizons and his waistline.
The inability to do simple math meant it took him five years to earn a 4-year degree in English Literature at Laurentian University and then, rather than find a ‘real’ job, Matthew followed it up with an MA in Humanities. After that he fell into the trap which awaits most Arts majors — unemployment and the delusion of literary talent.
Since that time, he has read voraciously, written occasionally, and worked hard at convincing his family that struggling writers are supposed to live rent-free in the basement. All with mixed success.
A member of the Sudbury Writers’ Guild, Matthew has been featured in local newspapers and websites, co-authored a sold-out fundraising novella for charity, self-published more than a dozen hyper-local titles—the latest being Danni Fundy: Occult Babysitter (2025), cowritten with Emily Andrews—and contributed to Spooky Sudbury: True Tales of the Eerie & Unexplained (Dundurn Press, 2014), the Aurora Award-winning Nothing Without Us Too (Renaissance Press, 2022), MIGHTY: An Anthology of Disabled Superheroes (Renaissance Press, 2023), Sudbury Superstack: A Changing Skyline (2024) and SWG: Unearthed (2026).
He co-edited SUPERCANUCKS: An Anthology of Canadian Small-town Superheroes (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2026) alongside Andy W. Taylor.
People told him that a semi-autobiographical collection of humorous essays focusing on disability was a terrible idea but he wrote JERRY LEWIS TOLD ME I WAS GOING TO DIE (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2023) regardless. Judging by the anemic sales figures, they were right. Matthew is busy working on a sequel anyway.
