In 2012, he took a position as an assistant professor in the English department at Northern Michigan University,[4] and currently teaches in the English department at Arizona State University.

His short fiction has also appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Conjunctions, Hayden's Ferry Review, Gulf Coast, Guernica, Willow Springs, Unsaid, and American Short Fiction.

At HTMLGiant, Kyle Minor wrote that "Matt Bell has built a national reputation on his own terms, completely outside the support system of New York publishing, on the strength of his stories and novellas, which are wholly original and singularly his own.

He is that rare sort of writer whose work the reader would recognize even if were published anonymously.

"[8] Cleveland Review of Books reviewed Appleseed: A Novel, calling Bell's prose "visceral and sensuous" as it explored humanity's "narrow, immediate, and self-serving worldview.