Matt Pruett
Matt Pruett is arguably the East Coast’s preeminent surf journalist, dedicating the last 30 years, or his entire adult life, to the culture.
His professional journey began on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where his mom dropped him off as a teenager with a bicycle, a surfboard, and a hundred bucks in his pocket. A few years later, some mutual friends introduced Pruett to Matt Walker, then-Editor of Eastern Surf Magazine (ECSHOF Class of 2022), who took a chance on the budding writer and assigned him a few stories. Pruett passed the acid test and Walker brought him on as an editorial intern in 1999, where his core values, work ethic, and comedic enthusiasm impressed ESM’s founders —Tom Dugan (ECSHOF Class of 2004), Dick Meseroll (ECSHOF Class of 2004), and the late Lally Collins — enough to offer the 25-year-old a full-time position.
Upon graduating from UNC-Wilmington in 2000 with a BA in English-Creative Writing, Pruett briefly benefited from the Internet boom, landing work with Swell.com before filling the editorial void left by Walker, who’d moved on to work at Surfing Magazine. Inside the ESM offices, the Associate Editor rose fast and was promoted to Editor within a few months. He remained at the helm for the next eight years, grinding out magazine after magazine while co-engineering the EasternSurf.com website and directing the ESM video, Always Right.
Focused entirely on irrigating his Right Coast roots, Pruett turned down several job offers from the west coast publications, but still moonlighted as either an assignment writer or a contributing writer for just about every respectable surf mag in the world: Surfer, Surfing, Transworld Surf, Surfing Life Japan, Surf Europe, Stab, The Surfer’s Journal… He also wrote a couple books, contributed to a couple anthologies, made a couple surf movies, and indulged more than his fair share of intangibles over the years from contest commentator to podcast guest. Most recently, he distilled New York photographer Mike Nelson’s life story and 30 years of work into one slick, hardcover book, “North of Nowhere.”
Homesickness eventually got the best of him, though, so Pruett moved back to the Outer Banks in 2009, where he became a permanent mercenary. After wandering the freelance wilderness for a recession or two, Pruett picked up a retainer with Surfline.com, the world’s leading surfing website, in 2015, where he functioned as both a Senior Writer/Editor/Copy Editor and their East Coast Editor.
During his tenure with Surfline, Pruett built a robust East Coast surfer/contributor network that he constantly updated with emerging talent; cultivating close personal and professional relationships with hundreds of surfers and forecasters, photographers and videographers, board builders and shop owners, contest directors and local liaisons; constantly investigating potential storylines and assessing materials for Surfline. Regardless if it’s print media, web media or social media, though, for Pruett it always comes down to one simple directive: Find the words. Get the pictures. Create something cool. Make people happy.
Matt Pruett has never been sponsored. Never won a contest. Never touched a GoPro. Never surfed in a wave pool. But after 40 years in the brine, he still rides a shortboard. Still takes surf trips. Still charges through the winter. Whether he’s writing about it, talking about it or actually doing it, surfing is all he ever thinks about. And surf journalism has carried him from a shallow sandbar in North Carolina to the deeply exotic wavescapes of Indonesia, Samoa, Hawaii, Peru, Ecuador, Turkey, Morocco, Portugal, Mexico, Nova Scotia, all throughout the Caribbean and Central America and beyond.
Today, he lives in South Nags Head with his lovely, artist wife Lauren and his sweet, mouthy dune dog Tut. The Atlantic Ocean is right across the street. Their backyard is the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
He’s never leaving this place. This was the plan all along.
Photos by Donald Cresitello, Tom Dugan, Freesurf Magazine, Ryan Gamma, Matt Lusk, Mickey McCarthy, Dick “Mez” Meseroll, Daniel Pullen, Robert Siliato, and courtesy Matt Pruett
Video contributions by Bob Bolen, Michael Baytoff, Richard Bernardi, Bruce Chrisner, Jon Coen, Eastern Surf Magazine, Donald Cresitello, Tom Dugan, Vdon Farias, Ryan Gamma, Norm Grosskruetz, Ray Hallgreen, Carlos Hernandez, Pete Hodgson, Darrell Jones, Jon Ker, Nicola Lugo, Matt Lusk, Kem McNair, Dick “Mez” Meseroll, Eric Olsen, Larry Pope, Tony Prince, Dan Przygocki, Barry Schulz, Joanne O’Shaughnessy, Jon Steele, Mike Vuocolo, and Chris Wilson.
