As we begin the semester, we're highlighting Bryn Mawr's newest faculty members. The College supports faculty excellence in both research and teaching and is committed to social justice and inclusion in the classroom and in the community at large.
The Arts Program at Bryn Mawr is pleased to welcome Airea "Dee" Matthews as Assistant Professor in Creative Writing this Fall. Matthews was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master in Public Administration from the University of Michigan, and a Master in Fine Arts from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program.
Matthews’s first collection of poems, Simulacra, won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award and was published by Yale University Press in April of this year. In his review for The New Yorker, Dan Chiasson describes Matthews's experimental forms in Simulacra as "Fugues, text messages to the dead, imagined outtakes from Wittgenstein, tart mini-operas, fairy tales: Matthews is virtuosic, frantic, and darkly, very darkly, funny."
Matthews's writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Harvard Review, American Poet, Four Way Review, Callaloo, Michigan Quarterly Review, Best American Poetry 2015, and elsewhere. She was awarded a 2016 Rona Jaffe Writer’s Foundation Award, the 2016 Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and a 2015 Kresge Literary Arts award, as well as having formerly received fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and The James Merrill House. Matthews's current projects include a second book, under/class, which seeks to lyrically deconstruct the accepted narratives around poverty and class.
Sample two of her poems in Four Way Review and learn more in the article "Introducing the Poetry of Airea D. Matthews" from poets.org.
Courses in Creative Writing within the Arts Program are designed for students who wish to develop their skills and appreciation of creative writing in a variety of genres (poetry, prose fiction and nonfiction, playwriting, screenwriting, etc.) and for those intending to pursue studies in creative writing at the graduate level. The Program also hosts the Bryn Mawr Reading Series, which brings major American and international writers in all literary genres to engage with students and the Philadelphia area community. Series guests visit the College’s Creative Writing Program workshops and present free public readings from their work.
Any English major may include one Creative Writing course in the major plan. Students may pursue a minor as described below. While there is no existing major in Creative Writing, exceptionally well-qualified students with a GPA of 3.7 or higher in Creative Writing courses completed in the Tri-College curriculum may consider submitting an application to major in Creative Writing through the Independent Major Program after meeting with the Creative Writing Program director. When approved, the independent major in Creative Writing may also be pursued as a double major with another academic major subject.