Adrian Matejka

Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany and grew up in California and Indiana. He is a graduate of Indiana University and the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His first collection of poems, The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Book, 2003), won the 2002 New York / New England Award from Alice James Books. His second collection, Mixology (Penguin USA, 2009), was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series and was a finalist for a NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature – Poetry. His most recent book, The Big Smoke (Penguin USA, 2013) was awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. The Big Smoke was also a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, the 2014 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He is a winner of the Julia Peterkin Award, the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, two grants from the Illinois Arts Council, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and United States Artists. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2010, Gulf Coast, Language Lessons: Volume One, Ploughshares, and Poetry among other journals and anthologies. He is the Lilly Professor / Poet-in-Residence at Indiana University in Bloomington and teaches in the low residency program at Lesley University. His new book of poems, Map to the Stars, is forthcoming from Penguin Random House in April 2017.