Matt Naylor

According to Matt’s Kindergarten teacher, he has been daydreaming stories since he was about five. He spent most of his adult life working as a filmmaker - doing everything from directing Emmy-Nominated documentary series to writing the #1 movie on Netflix. After his first daughter was born (and with his second one on the way), Matt took a break from movies to write his first children’s book… this one! It turned out to be his favorite thing he’s ever written (no offense to Netflix). He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, two daughters, their dog, and a fish named “Wild Dog.”

Matt has been close friends with Max Valverde since they did theater together in college, and it had always been a dream of theirs to collaborate again. In 2023, they found the right excuse: co-hosting a for-Tallies-only podcast on parenthood called Milkless, which quickly became a charting success. Midway through their first season, Matt sheepishly shared a draft of Violet Archer. Max went nuts over it, reading the entire story to his two boys that night. Then he spent the next six months teaching himself to illustrate with the help of AI tools, which transformed The Case of The Purple Martin from a Google Doc into Book 1 of Violet Archer. It’s the most fun either of them have had “working” in a long, long time.