 is among 13 poets who have been named Academy Of American Poets Laureate Fellows from the Academy of American Poets. Matejka receives a…){kind=link}
Indiana State Poet Laureate Adrian Matejka (Mah-TEE-kuh) is among 13 poets who have been named Academy Of American Poets Laureate Fellows from the Academy of American Poets. Matejka receives a $100,000 fellowship award to grow “Poetry for Indy” workshops in cities with underserved, culturally and economically diverse communities in Indiana. In addition, he plans a digital archive serving both as a historical documentation of poetry in Indiana and as a resource for teachers.
“Adrian Matejka has been an outstanding State Poet Laureate for Indiana during his term, and the Indiana Arts Commission is delighted to see this well-deserved recognition of his visionary, poetry outreach programs,” said IAC Executive Director Lewis C. Ricci.
Matejka began his two-year term as Indiana Poet Laureate concludes at the end of this year.
About
Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany and grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is a graduate of Indiana University and the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He is the author of The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Books, 2003) which won the New York / New England Award and Mixology (Penguin, 2009), a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series. Mixology was also a finalist for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature. His third collection, The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013), focuses on Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champion of the world. The Big Smoke was awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was also a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, 2014 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and 2014 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His most recent book, Map to the Stars, was published by Penguin in 2017. Among Matejka’s other honors are the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, the Julia Peterkin Award, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Bellagio Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and a Simon Fellowship from United States Artists. He teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington.