Adrian Matejka

Adrian Matejka is an American poet and author of The Devil's Garden and Mixology. His most decorated work is The Big Smoke, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was nominated for the National Book Award for Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Indiana State Poet Laureate for the 2018–2019 term, since May 2022, he has been the editor of Poetry magazine.^[1]

Adrian Matejka
Interview with Adrian Matejka at the University of Southern Indiana to read from his Pulitzer nominated book The Big Smoke.
Born	Nuremberg, Germany
Education	Indiana University, Bloomington (BA) Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (MFA)
Genre	Poetry

Life

Born in Nuremberg, Germany, while his family served in the U.S. military, Adrian Matejka was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the United States.^[1] He graduated from Indiana University Bloomington and Southern Illinois University Carbondale with an MFA in Creative Writing. He has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Workshop, the Guggenheim Foundation,^[2] the Lannan Foundation,^[3] the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists.

He is the author of The Devil's Garden and Mixology. His third collection, The Big Smoke, is about Jack Johnson and was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award^[4] and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize and won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.^[5] His latest collection, Map to the Stars, was published by Penguin in 2017.

His work has appeared in literary journals and magazines including The American Poetry Review, Callaloo,^[6] Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and in anthologies including From the Fishouse (Persea Books, 2009) ^[7] and The Best American Poetry 2010 (Scribner, 2010).^[8]

He teaches literature and creative writing at Indiana University,^[9] and was the Indiana State Poet Laureate for 2018 and 2019. In 2022, he was named editor of Poetry magazine.^[1]

Honors and awards

• 2002 New York / New England Award
• 2008 National Poetry Series
• 2009 Illinois Arts Council^[10]
• 2011 Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship
• 2013 National Book Award, Finalist
• 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Award
• 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2014 Lannan Literary Fellowship
• 2014 Pulitzer Prize, Finalist
• 2015 United States Artists Simon Fellowship
• 2018 Bellagio Foundation Residency Fellowship
• 2019 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship
• 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship

Published works

Poetry collections

• The Devil's Garden. Alice James Books. 2003. ISBN 9781882295418.
• Mixology. Penguin Group USA. 2009. ISBN 9780143115830.
• The Big Smoke. Penguin Group USA. 2013. ISBN 9780143123729.
• Map to the Stars. Penguin Group USA. 2017. ISBN 9780143130574.
• Somebody Else Sold the World (paperback ed.). New York: Penguin Books. 2021. ISBN 9780143136446.^[a]

Anthology contributions

• All Green^[b]

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Notes

1. Briefly reviewed in the September 13, 2021 issue of The New Yorker.
2. Toi Derricotte; Cornelius Eady; Camille T. Dungy, eds. (2006). "Understanding Al Green". Gathering ground: a reader celebrating Cave Canem's first decade. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-06924-8.