Thea Matthews

Thea Matthews is a poet from San Francisco whose work delves into the complexities of survival, resilience, and despair within the human condition. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and a BA in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. Her poetry has appeared in Colorado Review, The Common, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Massachusetts Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The New Republic, Alta Journal, On the Seawall, among other publications.

Matthews is the author of GRIME (City Lights Books, 2025) and Unearth [The Flowers] (Red Light Lit Press, 2020), which was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Poetry Books of 2020. Her teaching and mentorship span creative writing workshops, undergraduate courses at New York University, coaching for adolescent writers, public programming in the arts, and delivering lectures and seminars at universities across the United States. In 2023, she served as a poet-in-residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora and as a programming curator for the UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.