Matthew Zapruder

Matthew Zapruder is an American poet, editor, translator, and professor.

His second poetry collection, The Pajamaist, won the 2007 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and was chosen by Library Journal as one of the top ten poetry volumes of 2006. His first book, American Linden, won the Tupelo Press Editors' Prize.

Life Zapruder graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in 1985, then received his B.A. in Russian literature from Amherst College, his M.A. in Slavic languages from the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Humanities and Fine Arts.

He was co-founder (with Brian Henry) and editor-in-chief of Verse Press, which has since become Wave Books and moved from Amherst, Massachusetts, to Seattle, Washington. Matthew Zapruder and Joshua Beckman, who became friends when Beckman performed a reading in Amherst, are co-editors of Wave Books.

In 2003, he was a James Merrill House Fellow. In 2007, he was a writer-in-residence with the Lannan Foundation in Marfa, Texas. In 2011, he was a Guggenheim Fellow. He won the Tupelo Press Editors' Prize and the 2008 May Sarton Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Luxbooks published a German-language graphic novel version of his poem "The Pajamaist", translated by Ron Winkler and illustrated by Martina Hoffman. In the fall of 2012, Zapruder's poetry was adapted and performed at Carnegie Hall with composition by Gabriel Kahane and Brooklyn Rider.

His work has appeared in the Boston Review, The Believer, BOMB, McSweeney's, jubilat, Conduit, the Harvard Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Narrative Magazine.

He taught at New York University, The New School, the University of Houston, the University of California, Berkeley, and at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. and the Low Residency MFA Program at the University of California, Riverside.

He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the brother of musician Michael Zapruder and writer Alexandra Zapruder, and grandson of Abraham Zapruder. He is the guitarist in the band The Figments.

Published works Full-length poetry American Linden (Tupelo Press, 2002) The Pajamaist (Copper Canyon Press, 2006) Come On All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon Press, 2010) Sun Bear (Copper Canyon Press, 2014) Father's Day (Copper Canyon Press, 2019) I Love Hearing Your Dreams (Charles Scribner's Sons, 2024)

Nonfiction Why Poetry (HarperCollins, 2017)

Memoir Story of a Poem: A Memoir (Unnamed Press, 2023)

Translations Secret Weapon: The Late Poems of Eugen Jebeleanu (co-translated with Radu Ioanid, Coffee House Press, 2008)

Anthology contributions "Matthew Zapruder" in Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century, (edited by Michael Dumanis and Cate Marvin, Sarabande Books, 2006)

Edited anthologies

The Best American Poetry 2022 (co-edited with David Lehman, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2022)