Dr. Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the Boston-born author of the full length collections the Colored page (Sundress Publication, 2022), The Third Renunciation (New York Quarterly Books, 2023), and said the Frog to the scorpion (Harbor Editions, 2024), the chapbooks Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020) and Dust & Ashes (Californios Press, 2020), and the micro-chapbook have you heard the one about…?. (Ghost City Press, 2023).

MEH is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, the creative nonfiction editor at Porcupine Literary, and an associate editor at Rise Up Review. He’s been nominated and won some recognition for his poetry—including being the 2023 winner of the Solstice Literary Magazine Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize—but for some reason he continues to dabble in prose, mostly creative non-fiction.

He has a monthly newsletter too.

MEH’s poetry and prose publications include Amethyst Review, Anglican Theological Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Autofocus, ASP Bulletin, Baltimore Review, Barren Magazine, Bending Genres, Cola Literary Review, The Daily Drunk Mag, Dappled Things ,The Ekphrastic Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Fahmidan Journal, Fare Forward, The Florida Review, Frontier Poetry, Had, Identity Theory, Kweli Journal, Lucky Jefferson (Awake), Massachusetts Review, Mayday: Black, the museum of americana, The New Verse News, New York Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Nixes Mate Review, The Other Journal, Pangyrus, Pensive, Pidgeonholes, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Porcupine Literary, The Radical Teacher, Redivider, Rejection Letters, Relief Journal, Rhino, Rigorous, Rise Up Review, River Heron Review, Rock and Sling, Saint Katherine Review, Shenandoah, Solstice, Spillway, Spiritus, Tahoma Literary Review, 3Elements Literary Review, Terrain.org, Twyckenham Notes, The Windhover, The Worcester Review, and Zone 3 among others.

He received his MFA in poetry from Seattle Pacific University, yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing a MA in theology (Andover Newton Theological School) and a PhD in education (Lesley University). But he should not be confused with the long dead, white, theologian.

MEH is an educator whose career has found him teaching English, teacher education, philosophy, and sociology at the high school, college, and graduate levels. His writing shines a black-light on the bed of education, race, relationships, religion, and everything else you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company. He’s been known to make some sad and angry people irrationally uncomfortable.

Events and Services

See what MEH is up to or bring him to you!

He’s available for in-person and virtual readings, workshops, and professional developments on any of the above topics, especially how they intersect. He’s made appearances in various public and private K-12 schools, on college campuses, and presented for conferences including the American Academy of Religion, Association of Writers & Writing Programs, Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and National Council of Teachers of English.

To his students: I see you lurking on my page…