About Matt Mason
Matt Mason is the Nebraska State Poet and was Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective from 2009-2022.
Through the US State Department, he has run workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus. Mason is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council.
His work can be found in The New York Times, on NPR’s Morning Edition, in American Life in Poetry, and more. Mason’s 4th book, At the Corner of Fantasy and Main: Disneyland, Midlife and Churros, was released by The Old Mill Press in 2022.
Matt is based out of Omaha with his wife, the poet Sarah McKinstry-Brown, and daughters Sophia and Lucia.
Matt has:
- A Pushcart Prize (2013 edition)
- 2 Nebraska Book Awards
- Finalist for the position of Nebraska State Poet (2013)
- Served as a Cultural Envoy for the U.S. State Department in Romania in 2015, Botswana in 2014, Nepal in 2010 and Belarus in 2008 through the U.S. Department of State. All four programs worked with young poets in those countries, centering on writing and performing as well as on contemporary American poetry and the poetry slam (you can see video of the final youth poetry slam in Belarus here).
- Over 200 publications in magazines and anthologies
- Published 2 full-length collections of poetry, 2013’s The Baby That Ate Cincinnati and Things We Don’t Know We Don’t Know (The Backwaters Press, 2006), that won a Nebraska Book Award and was a Contemporary Poetry bestseller
- Run poetry programs for state universities and libraries in Bucharest, Romania; Gaborone, Botswana; Kathmandu, Nepal; Minsk, Belarus; Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, Iowa; Central Community College at their campuses in Columbus, Grand Island, and Hastings, NE; The College of Santa Fe, in Santa Fe, NM; Iowa State University; Midland Lutheran College in Fremont, NE; Mount Marty College in Yankton, SD; the University of California, Davis; the University of South Dakota; Wayne State College in Wayne, NE; and at many other colleges and universities as well as for dozens of high schools in Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri
- Presented with Pulitzer Prize winning authors Ted Kooser and Yusef Komunyakaa
- Worked with numerous libraries and arts organizations around the country, including Opera Omaha, the Joslyn Art Museum, the Anthology Reading Series in Phoenix, the Buffalo Commons Storytelling Festival, and Festival of the Arts in Columbia, Missouri.
Mason earned his MA in Creative Writing from the University of California at Davis, then, of course, moved to Omaha where he now lives with his wonderful wife Sarah and daughters Sophia and Lucia. He edits PoetryMenu.com, a listing of every Nebraska poetry event (and, yes, there are a lot, see for yourself) and founded Morpo Press which, since 1997, has published 30 chapbooks and one book by up-and-coming local writers. New Michigan Press released his chapbook Mistranslating Neruda in 2003 and Lone Willow Press put out When The Bough Breaks in 2005. He founded and, from 2002-2014, ran the Omaha Healing Arts Center Poetry Slam (on the 2nd Saturday of every month) as well as the occasional reading series. Matt has read his poetry everywhere from behind the podiums of the Nebraska Book Festival to the stages of the National Poetry Slam as well as at universities, high schools, libraries, book stores, radio shows, prisons, state fairs, art museums, bars, ice cream parlors, and coffee shops across the country–and on three other continents.
Matt currently serves as Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective, festival coordinator for the Louder Than a Bomb: Great Plains Youth Poetry Festival, past board president for the Nebraska Center for the Book, and consults for the Nebraska Arts Council for Nebraska’s Poetry Out Loud program (an NEA/Poetry Foundation program).