Adrian Matejka

Adrian Matejka is an American poet and author of The Devil's Garden and Mixology. His most decorated work is The Big Smoke, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was nominated for the National Book Award for Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Indiana State Poet Laureate for the 2018–2019 term, since May 2022, he has been the editor of Poetry magazine.

Life

Born in Nuremberg, Germany, while his family served in the U.S. military, Adrian Matejka was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the United States. He graduated from Indiana University Bloomington and Southern Illinois University Carbondale with an MFA in Creative Writing. He has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Workshop, the John [Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation|Guggenheim Foundation], the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists.
He is the author of The Devil's Garden and Mixology. His third collection, The Big Smoke, is about Jack Johnson and was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize and won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His latest collection, Map to the Stars, was published by Penguin in 2017.
His work has appeared in literary journals and magazines including The American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and in anthologies including From the Fishouse and The Best American Poetry 2010.
He teaches literature and creative writing at Indiana University, and was the Indiana State Poet Laureate for 2018 and 2019. In 2022, he was named editor of Poetry magazine.