Join MoAD for the culminating reading and celebration of the 2023 Poets-in-Residence program. We invite you to an evening of poetry readings by Poets-in-Residence Thea Matthews and Ashia Ajani. The program will feature live readings from the poets, a moderated conversation about their experience in the residency, and a reception.

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About the Poets

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Thea Matthews is a poet and educator of African and Indigenous Mexican descent born and raised on Ohlone land, San Francisco, California. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University and earned her BA in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in Epiphany Magazine, Obsidian Lit & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Cortland Review, West Trade Review, Southern Indiana Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Interim, The New Republic, Foglifter Journal, and others.  She has been nominated for Best New Poets in 2022 and Best of the Net in 2021. Her collaboration with micro press & reading series Red Light Lit led to the publication of her first book Unearth [The Flowers] in 2020, listed as part of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Poetry of 2020. She has taught creative writing at the university level, as well as through organizations such as the Writing Salon. Currently, Thea is a writing coach, a workshop facilitator, and an assistant content producer at the Academy of American Poets. She lives on the land of the Lenape, Brooklyn.

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Ashia Ajani is a sunshower, a glass bead, a carnivorous plant, an overripe nectarine hailing from Denver, CO, Queen City of the Plains and the unceded territory of the Cheyenne, Ute, and Arapahoe peoples. Ajani is a lecturer in the AfAm Department at UC Berkeley and a climate resilient schools educator with Mycelium Youth Network. A BSF Award recipient, Ajani has received fellowships from Just Buffalo Literary Center, Tin House, The Watering Hole, UC Berkeley’s P4P Climate Activism Residency and the Milkweed Hub Chrysalis Institute. Ajani is co-poetry editor of the Hopper Literary Magazine. Ajani’s writing is a kaleidoscope of their work as an eco-griot and abolitionist. Their debut poetry collection, Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing), is out now.

About the Poets-in-Residence Program

The Museum of the African Diaspora Poets-in-Residence program was founded in 2018. The program provides writers with opportunities to respond to contemporary art of the African Diaspora and extend the reach of the museum through programming and educational workshops with local high school students. The residency welcomes writers to pursue their own writing projects in addition to responding to the current exhibitions on view at MoAD. As part of the residency, writers implement a school-based writing program in partnership with high school students in the Spoken Arts Department at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts.

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