Adrian Matejka's most recent poetry collection, The Big Smoke, about the life of the boxer Jack Johnson, was published by Penguin in May 2013. He is also the author of The Devil's Garden (Alice James Books, 2003) and Mixology (Penguin, 2009) which was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series. He is the recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and fellowships from Cave Canem and the Lannan Foundation. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, and Poetry among other journals and anthologies. You can click here to listen to him read the poem "The Battle of the Century," from The Big Smoke (discussed at 33:47 in this interview), at the jubilat website. He teaches creative writing at Indiana University in Bloomington.
