Matthew Shenoda

Matthew Shenoda earned his BA from Oregon State University and MFA from the University of Arizona. He is the son of Coptic Christians, and in his work, he explores diasporic identity and pan-Arabism. Of his background, he has said, “This history of mine serves as a kind of translation, a new color applied to an existing piece of glass, each layer redefining the light that enters through it. These two realities overlay constantly to inform one another so that in the most seamless moments they become something fresh, something not entirely defined by either tradition, something purely diasporic or transnational in nature.” Shenoda’s first book, Somewhere Else (2005), won an American Book Award and the inaugural Hala Maksoud Award for Emerging Voice and was named one of the year’s top debut books by Poets & Writers magazine. He is also the author of Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone (2009) and The Way of the Earth (2022). Shenoda is  the editor of Kwame Dawes’s Duppy Conquerer: New and Selected Poems (2013). He is on the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund.