I’m Martheaus Perkins.

I was born in 2002 to a single mother and raised in East Texas. Since middle school, I’ve written poetry and short stories. In 2023, I graduated with a BA in English and was admitted to an MFA program, becoming my family’s first college graduate and grad school student. I write strange short stories, poetry, and essays. The themes of my work are all over the place:

• Black Motherhood

• Domestic Lyric and Familial History

• American Lynchings

• Poverty, Social Justice, and Politics

• Experimental, Visual, and Hermit Crab Forms

• Music, Humor, and Pop Culture

Currently, I live and teach in Virginia. My nerdy academic specialties include “Hip-Hop as Literature,” “The Black Superhero,” Shakespeare, and the Harlem Renaissance. My debut poetry collection, The Grace of Black Mothers, will be released in the summer of 2025 with Trio House Press.

My name is a portmanteau of the women who helped raise me: “Mar-” for my grandmother’s name, “-Thea-” for my mother’s, and “-us” for my aunties. I always write for them and carry their lessons in everything I work toward.

(All website portraits were taken by the very talented Abigail Mills)