Matt Donovan is the author of two collections of poetry—Vellum (Mariner, 2007) and Rapture & the Big Bam (Tupelo Press , 2017)—as well as the nonfiction collection of lyric essays A Cloud of Unusual Size and Shape: Meditations on Ruin and Redemption (Trinity University Press, 2016). His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including AGNI, American Poetry Review, The Believer, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry, Seneca Review, Threepenny Review and Virginia Quarterly Review. His piece “House of the Vettii” was selected as a notable essay for The Best American Essays 2013. 

Donovan is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize in Literature, a Pushcart Prize, a Creative Capital Grant, an NEA Fellowship in Literature, and the Larry Levis Reading Prize. He is currently collaborating on the chamber opera Inheritance about the life of Sarah Winchester.