Matt Bondurant is a contemporary, prize-winning American writer and author of the books The Third Translation and The Wettest County in the World. Director John Hillcoat planned to make a major motion picture starring Shia LaBeouf from The Wettest County in the World but failed due to financing issue.
Bondurant was born and raised in Alexandria, Virginia. His family's ancestral home in Franklin County, VA is the setting of his prohibition-era historical novel The Wettest County in the World, which tells the tale of his grandfather and granduncles as they run a massive moonshining operation in the mountains of southern Virginia.
Bondurant was a Walter E. Dakin Fellow at the Sewanee Writer's Conference and a Kingsbury Fellow at Florida State University.