Airea D. Matthews

Airea D. Matthews is the author of Simulacra, winner of the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets. Her second book, Bread and Circus, a memoir-in-verse, was published by Scribner in 2023. She received her M.F.A. from the Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, and her work has appeared in Best American Poets, Callaloo, Harvard Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. She was awarded a Kresge Literary Arts Award and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Cave Canem, Callaloo, and The James Merrill House. Airea is associate professor and co-director of creative writing at Bryn Mawr College and a faculty member at Warren Wilson’s MFA program. She served as Poet Laureate of Philadelphia from 2022-23. In 2024 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship.