​Matthew Modica was born and raised near the Illinois-Wisconsin border. After completing a BA in history at the University of Illinois and an MFA in creative writing at Emerson College, he served as the 2013-2014 Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. His fiction has received support from the MacDowell Colony and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and has appeared in journals such as The Antioch Review, Witness, Mississippi Review Online, Fourteen Hills, and others. 

He lives with the writer Asako Serizawa in Boston, Massachusetts.