Thea Matthews

Thea Matthews is a poet of African and Indigenous Mexican descent originally from San Francisco, California and the author of GRIME (City Lights, 2025). She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University and a BA in sociology from UC Berkeley. Her poetry has appeared in the Colorado Review, The Common, Obsidian Lit & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Massachusetts Review, The New Republic, Alta Journal, On the Seawall, and others. Her first book Unearth [The Flowers] was published by Red Light Lit Press and was listed under Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Poetry of 2020. She teaches creative writing and serves as a creative writing coach to adolescent girls at CinnamonGirl. In the fall and early winter of 2023, Matthews was a poet in residence for the Museum of African Diaspora and a programming curator for the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.