Graham Mathews was raised a reader by writers, alongside his twin brother. From a young age, his parents dutifully instilled a love of literature in him through bedtime readings. His mother, a lifelong journalist by profession, opted for such timeless selections from Allen Johnson Jr.'s dreary My Brother's Story (which was so despised by Graham and his brother that it found itself hidden away in the back of a cabinet— never to be seen again) to Alan Snow's fantastical Here Be Monsters! (which his mother hated so much that it's a wonder she didn't stumble on Johnson's book while herself hiding Snow's). His father, a dedicated memoirist by recreation and a master of compromise by necessity, stuck solely to reading the twins Calvin and Hobbes comic strips, which perhaps built Graham the most character of all.
During highschool, Graham grew into his love of all things natural while working as an intern at The Land Institute, a non-profit agricultural research organization based in Salina, Kansas. He spent many formative days there listening to audiobooks while sweeping the greenhouse or reading paperbacks on rainy breaks under the roof of the institute's solar electric golf carts. His love of nature eventually soared him to the rank of Eagle Scout with an anti-littering documentary on behalf of the Friends of the River Foundation, a Salina organization dedicated to restoring the city's treasured Smoky Hill River.
Come college as a Wildcat at Kansas State University, he began the decidedly analytical journey of achieving a Computer Science degree. In an effort to counterbalance the rigidness of writing code, he further pursued his love of literature through the completion of a minor in English Writing and had the honor of a poem, The Final Coming, appearing in the university's newspaper The Collegian. Today, he enjoys writing and reading poetry (especially Hardy and Dickinson), haphazardly skateboarding, and moshing with friends at concerts.
We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
– They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing….
Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.