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About

Matt Sedillo has been described as the "best political poet in America" by investigative journalist and documentarian Greg Palast as well as "the poet laureate of the struggle" by Professor and Hitorian Paul Ortiz.

 

Sedillo's work has drawn comparisons in print to Bertolt Brecht, Roque Dalton, Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, Carl Sandburg and various other legends of the past.

 

Sedillo was the recipient of the 2017 Joe Hill Labor Poetry award, a panelist at the 2020 Texas book festival, a participant in the 2012 San Francisco International Poetry Festival, the 2022 Elba Poetry Festival, the 2023 Palabra Del Mundo Festival in Venice, Italy, the recipient of the 2022 Dante's Laurel, a panelist at the 2023 Guadalajara Book Fair a panelist at the 2023 FIL Mineria, a plenary speaker at the 14th Biennal Conference of the Hungarian Association of American Scholars, a reader at the 2024 Medillin Poetry Festival, and a reader at the 2024 Boao Festival in Thailand.

 

Sedillo has appeared on CSPAN and has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Axios, the Associated Press, La Jornada, NPR among many other publications and broadcasts. Sedillo has spoken at Casa de las Americas in Havana, Cuba, Dante's Basilica in Ravenna Italy, at numerous conferences and forums such as the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, the National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education, the National Association of Chicana/Chicano Studies, the Left Forum, the US Social Forum, and at over a hundred universities and colleges, including the University of Cambridge, UNAM, and Stanford, among many others.

 

Matt Sedillo is the author of Mowing Leaves of Grass (FlowerSong Press, 2019) and City on the Second Floor (FlowerSong Press, 2022). Both of which are taught at universities throughout the country. Sedillo is the current literary director of The Mexican Cultural Institute of Los Angeles, the National Coordinator of the World Poetry Movement US, the Co-Founder of El Martillo Press, and Lead Host of Radio La Raza on KPFK 90.7.

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"Matt Sedillo's poetic work is full of history, struggle, tragedy, anger, joy, despair, possibility and faith in the struggles of working class people to overcome the forces of capitalism and racism. If Patrice Lumumba, Rosa Luxembourg, Emiliano Zapata and Ella Baker were alive today, they would all be reading and sharing Matt Sedillo's work with their comrades in service of organizing the next revolution. He is truly the poet laureate of struggle."

 

—Paul Ortiz, Author of Emancipation Betrayed and Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program

Buy Mowing Leaves of Grass

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"I studied with Ginsberg, I drank with Bukowski, and now I’ve met the new master. run and hide, white boy, Sedillo writes with a switchblade. the best political poet alive—and everything is political."

—Greg Palast, author of How Trump Stole 2020: The Hunt for America's Vanished Voters (Seven Stories Press, 2020)

Buy City on the Second Floor

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Booking

To inquire about booking Matt Sedillo for a paid reading or workshop:

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