Matthew Clayfield is a 25-year-old journalist, critic, screenwriter and playwright.

Born and raised in Mount Gambier, South Australia, Matthew has since lived all over the country, attending university on Queensland's Gold Coast, working as a freelancer in Melbourne, Victoria, and moving to New South Wales in 2008, where he worked on The Australian newspaper until June 2010. He spent the latter part of that year travelling through the US, Mexico and Cuba, working as a freelance foreign correspondent. He is currently based in Sydney and co-edits the websiteDisposable Words. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

His criticism covers topics including cinema, theatre, dance, opera, visual art, comedy, books and restaurants, and has appeared in Senses of Cinema, Metro Magazine, RealTime, the Australian Book Review, The Australian, and on his personal blog, Esoteric Rabbit, which ran from 2002 to 2009. He was editor of The Australian's Out & About arts listings between December 2009 and June 2010.

In 2007, he covered the Australian election for Vibewire Youth Inc.'s ElectionTracker project, following former Prime Minister John Howard on the campaign trail for a week and live-blogging election night from the National Tally Room in Canberra.

As a filmmaker, Matthew's Firelight, a short essay film, screened at the Brisbane International Film Festival in 2006, and the Melbourne Underground Film Festival screened a retrospective of his work that same year as a part of their avant-garde sidebar. As a screenwriter, Matthew's How My Next Door Neighbour Discovered Life on Mars was produced in 2005 and has since screened on every continent in the world including Antarctica. His screenplay Frog was produced in 2009 and premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2010. As a playwright, Matthew's one-act play The Ides won the State Theatre Company of South Australia's Young Playwright of the Year Award in 2003. His most recent stage play, Lord Jones Is Dead, was completed in 2010 and will be produced as a film in 2011.

Matthew was a national finalist in the Rostrum Voice of Youth public speaking competition from 2001 to 2003 and was runner-up twice. He was awarded a $20,000 Nescaf Big Break in 2003. He was a shortlisted finalist for Young Journalist of the Year in the 2009 News Limited News Awards.

He holds a Bachelor of Film and Television from Bond University and a Masters of Journalism from the University of Queensland.

He would like to be a freelance citizen of the world when he grows up and dislikes writing about himself in the third person.