Matthew C. Thompson
Matthew C. Thompson is the author of MAYHEM, a ‘documentary in writing’ about Australia’s most notorious bandit and prisoner, Christopher ‘BADNE$$’ Binse, published by Pan Macmillan. He has also written two books of international reportage: My Colombian Death and Running with the Blood God, both published by Picador.
Matt has worked and written for a range of newspapers, magazines, and websites, taught at universities in Australia and Fiji, edited book manuscripts, and produced radio documentaries, most recently about rebel domains of the southern Philippines for ABC Radio National.
Matt completed a Doctor of Creative Arts at the University of Western Sydney’s Writing & Society Research Centre. His dissertation examined, in part, the nonfiction of US writer William T. Vollmann and was examined by New York University’s Director of Literary Reportage, Robert Boynton. Matt is a Conjoint Fellow at the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle.
Born in Portland, Oregon, USA, Matt lives in Dungog, New South Wales, where he is a part-time firefighter and rescue operator.
All essays by Matthew C. Thompson
Smite the Soapies
‚ÄòBinge on the best,‚Äô says a current advertising slogan for streaming service Stan. Binge: to lose control of one‚Äôs appetites; to be a glutton; to hide from reality behind a mountain of consumption. Fair enough. But ‚Äòthe best‚Äô? No. Not yet. Not while we have forgotten the stark lessons of the Lord and instead let our storytelling slip back into the mould of interminable bloody soap operas.’¬†
Don’t Go To Jolo – Part Five
‘Mike has worked with enough Westerners to know to get blunt. “‘Matt, if you cannot get military protection, don’t go to Jolo. Do you understand? You are a marked man. The only white civilians in Jolo are hostages in pits.”’ The final instalment of Matthew C. Thompson’s reportage from the Sulu Archipelago
Don’t Go To Jolo – Part Four
‘Henry, the policeman with the invisible support squad of jinns, wants to help expose me to the views of Muslims during my stay in this protected enclave. Indeed, he expresses the hope that I will embrace Islam, the way of the Sunni, and convert.’ Matthew Thompson meets the Mufti of Basilan as he tries to broker a trip to the troubled island of Jolo in the Sulu Archipelago.
Don’t Go To Jolo – Part Three
‘“I look at them as a criminal group posturing as Islamic radicals,” says “Tiny” Perez, the battalion’s muscular commanding officer, as we have chocolate wafers and coffee in an open hilltop hut.’ This is the third instalment of Matthew Thompson’s account of his 2014 journey into the Sulu Archipelago, a violent, beautiful and contested region of the southern Philippines.
Don’t Go To Jolo – Part Two
The second instalment of Matt Thompson’s reportage on the resistence to terrorism in the Sulu Archipelago of the southern Philippines, during which he performs badly at a karaoke session with the Vice-Mayor of Lamitan City, Oric Furigay, descendent of ‘the last Conquistador’, and accepts his offer of a heavily armed escort to visit the outpost of Tipo Tipo, ‘the capital of the terrorist’.
Don’t Go To Jolo – Part One
The War on Terror that George W. Bush declared in 2001 (in which he included the Philippines as one of three fronts, the other two being Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa) may feel to America like a bad dream that is dragging on too long, but empires have come and gone during the dream of Jolo and its surrounds. The War on Terror is nothing new in the Philippines. It’s more a state of nature.