Holy Family University Distinguished Writers Series Featuring Airea D. Matthews
Join award-winning poet for an in-person author talk.
Holy Family University will host a Distinguished Writers Series featuring Airea D. Matthews, author of the award-winning poetry collection Simulacra.
When: Wednesday, October 27 at 6:30 p.m.
Where: Education and Technology Center Auditorium at Holy Family University
(Frankford Avenue and E. Stevenson Lane - GPS address 9801 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19114)
The event is FREE and open to the public. When visiting the Holy Family University campus, you will be required to follow our Masking Policy.
The event will also be livestreamed via Zoom. To attend on Zoom, reserve your place here.
About Airea D. Matthews
Airea D. Matthews’ first collection of poems is the critically acclaimed Simulacra, which received the prestigious 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. The collection explores the topics of longing and desire with power, insight, and intense emotion.
“Airea D. Matthew’s work manipulates poetic tradition and voices the conflicted emotional tenor of our time,” said Gina MacKenzie, Ph.D., Associate Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Holy Family University. “Her work speaks to our present moment and needs to be heard.”
For her writing, Matthews earned a 2020 Pew Fellowship as well as the 2017 Margaret Walker For My People award. In 2016, she received both the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Gulf Coast, Best American Poets, American Poet, The Rumpus, Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Harvard Review. A Cave Canem, Callaloo, and Kresge Literary Arts Fellow, Matthews is a founding member of the transdisciplinary art studio The Teeth Factory.
Matthews holds a BA in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania as well as an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program and an MPA from the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy, both at the University of Michigan. She is an assistant professor and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College, where she was presented the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award.
The Holy Family University Distinguished Writers Series is dedicated to promoting diversity, social awareness, critical thinking, as well as furthering Holy Family University’s mission and core values of community, respect, integrity, experiential learning, vision, and service.