Matthew Fowler, M.F.A.

Assistant Professor

Email: [email protected] | Office: AL-323

Matthew Fowler is originally from the High Desert region of Southern California, and spent a portion of his life in Baltimore, Maryland before relocating to San Diego. He is of Indigenous P’urhépecha and Otomí descent through his paternal line. His work centers ethnopoetics, visual sovereignty, Indigeneity and relationality, land and migration, survivance, reclamation and preservation, border studies, sociopolitical criticism, decolonization, and social milieus and movements.

Fowler holds an associate degree from Harford Community College, a bachelor of arts in literature and writing studies from California State University San Marcos, and a master of fine arts in creative writing from San Diego State University. Fowler is a Sarah B. Marsh-Rebelo Award recipient, and his work can be found in online and print publications including PRISM International, Quarterly West, Sycamore Review, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere.

Fowler’s current research and book manuscript, titled “Everything Like Yellow Turmeric,” invokes ancestral memory and community obligation to situate storytelling as an epistemological foundation. This hybrid narrative explores the relationship between trade flows, migration, adoption, and environmental catastrophe. “Everything Like Yellow Turmeric” positions language preservation and spiritual healing as retaliatory methodologies against settler colonialism and an affirmation of sovereignty that maps geographies, drives the process of reterritorialization, and perpetuates cultural inheritance for future generations. 

In his spare time, Fowler enjoys hiking, photography, reading and writing, bicycling, spending time with his dog, and camping.