Matthew Yeager's poems have appeared in Sixthfinch, Gulf Coast, Bat City Review, and elsewhere, as well as Best American Poetry 2005 and Best American Poetry 2010. His short film "A Big Ball of Foil in a Small NY Apartment" was an official selection at eleven film festivals in 2009-2010, picking up three awards. Other distinctions include the Barthelme Prize in short prose and two MacDowell fellowships. The co-curator of the long running KGB Monday Night Poetry Series, he has worked in the NY catering industry for thirteen years in various capacities: truck driver, waiter, sanitation helper, sanitation captain, bartender, bar captain, and lead captain. A native of Cincinnati, OH, his interests include 18th century American history, fingerpicking, the Cincinnati Bengals, and creative carpentry. His first book is Like That from Forklift Books.
While at MacDowell in 2007, poems for a manuscript tentatively titled Bright Sized Life, which he imagined would be his first full-length book of verse. He also outlined and broke ground on the film script for A Big Ball of Foil in Small Apartment. In 2011, he reworked the pilot for a historical drama about the 18th century American fur trade, doubled his knowledge of the period, and solved two poems that had been eluding him for years. During his 2017 residency, Yeager completed editing a volume of long poems to serve as a companion to Like That.
