Things We Don't Know We Don't Know

2007 Nebraska Book Award

"Matt Mason must be declared the Poet Laureate of the Midwest! No other native son celebrates the overlooked America, its unsung citizens (from the anonymous poets to the part-time English teachers), and its expansive indigenous landscape as well as he does. Mason’s poetry is humorous when he wants to be quirky, heartbreaking when he wants to be eloquent, and though he moves effortlessly into other moods and geographies, he always returns to his first and most enduring love (and to what he knows best)—his homeland."—Rigoberto González, Director, National Book Critics Circle

After earning his MA in Creative Writing from the University of California at Davis, Matt Mason, of course, moved to Omaha where he lives with his wonderful wife Sarah and baby daughter Sophia. He has won 2 Nebraska Book Awards and over 100 magazines and anthologies have published his poems, including Laurel Review, Prairie Schooner, The Morpo Review, the online edition of Mississippi Review and Mark Eleveld's The Spoken Word Revolution Redux. New Michigan Press released his chapbook Mistranslating Neruda in 2003; not to be outdone, Lone Willow Press put out When The Bough Breaks in 2005.

Mason has read poetry everywhere from behind the podiums of the Nebraska Book Festival to the stages of the National Poetry Slam as well as at universities, high schools, libraries, book stores, radio shows, state fairs, art museums, bars, ice cream parlors, and coffee shops across the country, even appearing as the stand-in for Poet Laureate Ted Kooser and Oscar winning director Alexander Payne at rehearsals for the opening of a performing arts center. He was appointed an Admiral in the Great Navy of the State of Nebraska by Governor Mike Johanns in 2004, enjoy donuts, and sometimes do write about cows.