Matthew M. Cariello was born and raised in New Jersey. One morning in 1962 as he stood in the cement backyard in Union City, an airplane flew overhead and the drone of the plane's engine harmonized with some frequency deep in his brain. He attended Rutgers as an undergrad and the Master's program in creative writing at New York University, and earned a PhD in English Education from NYU in 1992. He was fortunate enough to work with dozens of remarkable poets and teachers during his years in New York and New Jersey, and made maybe five good friends. His first book of poems, A Boat That Can Carry Two/Una barca per due, won the 2010 Bordighera Poetry Prize and was published in a bilingual edition in 2011. He's had stories, haiku, poems and reviews published in Voices in Italian Americana, Ovunque Siamo, Poet Lore, The Moth, Artful Dodge, The Evening Street Review, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Heron's Nest, The Long Story, Atlas Poetica, Under the Basho, The Indiana Review, Iron Horse Review, The Journal, and others. Currently, he's a senior lecturer in the English department at The Ohio State University in Columbus, where he teaches courses in literature and writing.