Poets

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Matt Mason

Nebraska State Poet, 2019-2024

Matt Mason holds an MA from the University of California, Davis. He is the author of At the Corner of Fantasy and Main: Disneyland, Midlife and Churros (The Old Mill Press, 2022); I Have a Poem the Size of the Moon (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2020); The Baby That Ate Cincinnati (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2013); and Things We Don’t Know We Don’t Know (The Backwaters Press, 2006). 

Mason is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and two Nebraska Book Awards.

The former executive director of the Nebraska Writers Collective, Mason has run workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus through the U.S. State Department. He lives in Omaha, and serves as the Nebraska State Poet. In 2022, Mason received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship

Matt Mason
Photo credit: Laurie & Charles Photographs
Poet Laureate Project
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Laureate Project
Poet Laureate of Nebraska

Poet Laureate of Nebraska

In 2022, Matt Mason was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. In collaboration with Humanities Nebraska, Mason will create the Nebraska Poetry Pen Pal Program, which will bring poetry and poets into rural Nebraska county schools, libraries, correctional facilities, cultural centers, reservations, museums, and other parts of Nebraska’s varied communities. On his tour, Mason will work with Nebraska writers of different ethnicities, backgrounds, and experiences. This project will showcase poetry in a way that will stir interest in and generate excitement about the art form.