William Matthews was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received his B.A. from Yale University in 1965 and his M.A. from the University of North Carolina in 1966. He married Marie Harris in 1963 (they were divorced in 1974); they have two sons. Matthews has taught at Wells College, Cornell University, Emerson College, Sarah Lawrence College, the Universities of Iowa and Colorado, and he is now director of the creative writing program at the University of Washington. Matthews also serves as vice-president of the board of directors of the Associated Writers Program, and chairman of the literature panel of the National Endowment for the Arts. He was a cofounder of Lillabulero Press and Lillabulero magazine, and he is a member of the editorial board of Wesleyan University Press.

Although Matthews is only thirty-seven years old, he has published approximately four hundred seventy poems in 130 different magazines, including sixty-five translations (with Mary...