Academics

Matthew Shenoda is a writer, professor and university administrator whose poems and essays have appeared in a variety of newspapers, journals, radio programs and anthologies. He has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his work has been supported by the California Arts Council and the Lannan Foundation, among others.

Shenoda’s debut collection of poems, Somewhere Else (Coffee House Press), was named one of the 2005 debut books of the year by Poets & Writers Magazine and won a 2006 American Book Award. His poetry is also collected in Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone (BOA Editions Ltd.) and Tahrir Suite: Poems (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press), which won the 2015 Arab American Book Award. He is the editor of Duppy Conqueror: New & Selected Poems by Kwame Dawes and (with Dawes) the 2017 anthology Bearden’s Odyssey: Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press).

Shenoda teaches in the fields of ethnic studies and creative writing and has held faculty and administrative positions at various institutions. Before coming to RISD in 2018 he was the assistant provost for equity and diversity at CalArts and dean of academic diversity, equity and inclusion at Columbia College Chicago. Additionally, Shenoda teaches in the low-residency MFA Writing Program at Pacific University and is a founding editor of the African Poetry Book Fund.