Researching Matt Mason

Mason started his career with Western Australia in 1996–97, and made his senior debut in a February List A win over Tasmania, taking the wicket of Michael di Venuto. Six days later he made his first appearance in first-class cricket in a drawn Sheffield Shield match against Queensland, but could manage only 1-72. He batted as a nightwatchman in his team's second innings, but made just 3 before being bowled by Michael Kasprowicz.

He played another three first-class games and one List A match in 1997–98, but never took more than two wickets in an innings and drifted out of the side. A few years later, Worcestershire coach Tom Moody, who had known Mason since the bowler was a teenager, tried to entice him to New Road to play county cricket, but was turned down; however, a second approach was accepted and Mason became a Worcestershire player in time for the 2002 season.

Mason's first-team experience at Worcester began in the Benson & Hedges Cup, where he took seven wickets in three matches. A number of further one-day games followed, before he was given his County Championship debut against Northamptonshire in July. He responded with six wickets in the match, and kept his place in the first-class side for the rest of the season, taking 5–50 against Nottinghamshire. In the last game of the season in September, he also scored a vital 50 as Worcestershire squeezed past Derbyshire by just one wicket.

2003 saw Mason firmly established in the first team, and he took 53 first-class wickets that year at a fine average of 21.58, as well as 26 wickets at 24.92 in limited-overs cricket. A highlight came in early July, when he took 6–68 in the second innings (and 9–116 in the match) against Durham as Worcestershire recorded a 31-run win. In 2004 he took 52 wickets, albeit at an average slightly over 30, and he passed the 50-wicket mark for the third successive summer in 2005.

He struggled with injuries through 2007 and 2008 before returning to the side and in August 2008, signed a deal with the club which saw him assume the dual role of player and bowling coach in 2009.

Six of Mason's eight chapbooks have been published through his own small press, Morpo Press. His first full-length book, Things We Don't Know We Don't Know (2006), was published by the Backwaters Press and debuted at #12 on The Poetry Foundation's Contemporary bestsellers list. His second book The Baby That Ate Cincinnati was released in 2013 by the Stephen F. Austin University Press. The anthology Slamma Lamma Ding Dong (2005), which Mason co-edited, was made available through iuniverse and won the 2006 Nebraska Book Award for Best Anthology.

Mason is a poetry activist in the Omaha area. He operates the Poetry Menu, a website that lists poetry events in Nebraska. Mason has been a member of the team representing Omaha at the National Poetry Slam on multiple occasions from 2003, most recently in Oakland, CA, August 2015. Mason currently serves as Executive Director of Nebraska Writers Collective, festival coordinator for the Louder Than a Bomb: Great Plains Youth Poetry Festival, past board president for the Nebraska Center for the Book, and served as a consultant for the Nebraska Arts Council for Nebraska’s Poetry Out Loud program (an NEA/Poetry Foundation program) until 2016. He has served on the board of directors for the Nebraska Literary Heritage Association, the Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards, Friends of the Omaha Public Library, and the Medusa Project. In October, 2015, Mason served as a representative for the U.S. State Department in Romania teaching Poetry slam to high schools students in various cities. Mason has also been in charge of State Department programs in Belarus (2008), Nepal (2010), and Botswana (2014).

Mason is married to the poet Sarah McKinstry-Brown (Sarah Mason). They have two daughters, Sophia and Lucia.