The Dickman twins (Matthew is the younger and slightly taller) were raised in the Lents neighborhood of Portland, which declined into a dangerous neighborhood after a highway was built through it in 1975. Their mother, Wendy Dickman, raised them alone; her stepfather was the father of poet Sharon Olds.^[1] They have a younger half-sister and an older half-brother and half-sister through their father, Allen Hull.^[2] After starting at the elementary school across the street, the boys attended private schools. Matthew Dickman went to Portland Community College and then graduated with a B.A. from the University of Oregon in 2001; the brothers then studied creative writing together at the University of Texas, Austin.^[1] The twins had a brief stint as actors, featuring in the 2002 Steven Spielberg film Minority Report as the precognitive twins.^[1][2] After graduate school Matthew Dickman lived in Hudson, New York, but by 2009 both had returned to Portland, where he worked at Whole Foods; both brothers supported themselves with food-service jobs since a joint apprenticeship to a butcher at age thirteen.^[1]

Matthew Dickman has received fellowships from The Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, The Vermont Studio Center, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.^[3] He is the author of three chapbooks, Amigos, Something about a Black Scarf and Wish You Were Here, and three full-length poetry collections. His first book, All-American Poem, was winner of the 2008 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry, published by American Poetry Review and distributed by Copper Canyon Press.^[1] He was also the winner of the 2009 Kate Tufts Discovery Award for that book, and the inaugural May Sarton Award from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. His second full collection of poetry, Mayakovsky's Revolver, was published by W. W. Norton and Company in 2012.^[4] He is also the coauthor with his brother, of the 2012 poetry collection 50 American Plays, also published by Copper Canyon Press, and the 2016 Brother, a collection of poems on their half-brother's suicide.^[2] His third collection, Wonderland, was published in 2018 by Norton.^[5]

His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Tin House, Clackamas Literary Review, AGNI Online,^[6] The Missouri Review,^[7] and The New Yorker.^[8]

Dickman works in advertising where he is a freelance senior copy writer and creative director. He has been a Visiting Writer at Reed College,^[9] and is an adjunct fellow at The Attic institute in Portland.^[10]

• 2006 Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship^[11]
• 2008 Oregon Literary Fellowships recipient^[12]
• 2008 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry.
• 2009 Kate Tufts Discovery Award
• 2009 Oregon Book Award finalist^[13]

Chapbooks edit

• Dickman, Matthew (2007). Amigos. Q Ave Press.
• — (2008). Something about a black scarf. Azul Press.
• — (2013). Wish you were here. Spork Press.
• — (2014). 24 Hours. Onestar Press/Poor Claudia.

Collections edit

• Dickman, Matthew (2008). All-American poem. American Poetry Review.
• — (2012). Mayakovsky's revolver. W. W. Norton.
• Dickman, Matthew & Michael Dickman (2012). 50 American plays : poems. Port Townsend, Wash.: Copper Canyon Press.
• Dickman, Matthew (2018). Wonderland : poems. W.W. Norton.
• Dickman, Matthew (2022). Husbandry : poems. W.W. Norton.

• "Matthew Dickman", Bougainvillea
• "Matthew Dickman", Fishouse
• "Michael Dickman: “My Autopsy”", The Unofficial New Yorker Poetry Supplement
• "The 'Manny'", The Story, American Public Media