Ayana Mathis is on the faculty of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Hunter College, CUNY. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she became the first African American woman to become an assistant professor in that program. Her most recent novel, The Unsettled (Knopf, 2023), was named a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book of 2023 and a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker, Publisher’s Weekly, and Kirkus. Her first novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Knopf, 2012), was a 2013 New York Times Notable Book, NPR Best Book of 2013, and second selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. Mathis’s nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Guernica, and the Financial Times, among others, and she has received support from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Bogliasco Foundation. Currently pursuing a Masters of Divinity at Union Theological Seminary, Mathis has most recently been writing essays that explore the intertwining of faith and American literature, a number of which have been published in her multi-part New York Times series, “Imprinted by Belief.”
At the Academy, Mathis is working on a collection of essays on contemporary American literature and faith. They build upon her eponymous “New York Times” series, which explores Christianity’s indelible imprint, for better or for worse, knowingly or unwittingly, on American identity and culture. James Baldwin’s soaring, sermonic prose; Toni Morrison’s scriptural authority; William Faulkner’s Genesis-like cosmologies of Southern identity and place—all draw heavily on a Christian-inflected aesthetic that Mathis will examine, along with the ways in which Christian ideas of morality and justice continue to inform the nation’s literature.
Meet Ayana Mathis
A short portrait filmed at the Hans Arnhold Center, introducing the work and ideas behind fellows’ projects in Berlin.
Upcoming events
Discover what’s coming up in the Academy’s public program this semester.
Past events
Lectures, readings, and conversations from the Academy’s public program.
Inflections of Belief
Writer Ayana Mathis discusses the religious inflections in the fiction she reads, writes, and critiques.
The Unsettled: A Novel
A reading and discussion with novelist Ayana Mathis
Berlin Journal Articles
Essays, interviews, and creative work published in the Academy’s annual magazine.
Books
Books written by fellows of the Academy, many begun during a semester in Berlin.
Videos
Lectures, readings, and conversations filmed at the Hans Arnhold Center.
Inflections of Belief
Writer Ayana Mathis discusses her recent novel “The Unsettled” and the overlapping missions of religion and literature.
Explore Past Fellows
Hakim Abderrezak
Marco Abel
David Abraham
