Ayana Mathis
April 27–28, 2026
Bio
Ayana Mathis's first novel, The
Twelve Tribes of Hattie was a New York Times bestseller
and has been translated into sixteen languages. Her nonfiction has been published in
The New York Times, The Atlantic,
Guernica, and Rolling Stone. Mathis
has been the recipient of fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center,
the Bogliasco Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy, and the American
Academy in Berlin. She was the first Black woman to be a permanent member of the
faculty at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and has taught in MFA Programs at Columbia University
and Rutgers. She currently hosts and curates the Black Arts Dialogues series, a
conversation series centered around art and Blackness hosted by the African American
and African Diasporic Studies Department at Columbia University, and teaches in the
MFA Creative Writing Program at Hunter College.