Brief bio: 

Maya Jewell Zeller is a multi-genre author of several books and collaborations, most recently The Wonder of Mushrooms (AdventureKEEN, fall 2025);  out takes/ glove box, selected by Eduardo Corral as winner of the 2022 New American Poetry Prize; and the co-authored textbook (with Kathryn Nuernberger) Advanced Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024). Maya’s prose appears widely, and her essay, “Scavenger Panorama,” was honored by Vivian Gornick as a Notable in Best American Essays 2023. Maya is Professor of English for Central Washington University, and Affiliate Faculty of Poetry and Nature Writing for Western Colorado University’s low-residency MFA program. Maya lives in the Inland Northwest with her children. Her memoir, Raised by Ferns, will be out in early 2026 from Porphyry Press. 

Medium bio: 

Maya Jewell Zeller (educator, essayist, poet) is the author of The Wonder of Mushrooms (AdventureKEEN, fall 2025); out takes/ glove box, chosen by Eduardo Corral as winner of the New American Poetry Prize (out November 2023); as well as the interdisciplinary collaboration (with visual artist Carrie DeBacker) Alchemy For Cells & Other Beasts (Entre Rios Books, 2017); the chapbook Yesterday, the Bees (Floating Bridge Press, 2015); and the poetry collection Rust Fish (Lost Horse Press, 2011). She is co-author, with Kathryn Nuernberger, of Advanced Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Literary, January 2024), and co-editor, with Sharma Shields, of the multi-genre anthology Evergreen: Grim Tales and Verses from the Gloomy Northwest (Scablands Books, 2021). Maya’s prose appears in The Rumpus, Diagram, Brevity, Bellingham Review, Booth Journal, and in several anthologies, including the NY-Times bestselling This is the Place: Women Writing About Home (Seal Press, 2017) and the forthcoming Environmental and Nature Writing (Bloomsbury 2025). Additionally, her essay “Scavenger Panorama” was selected by Vivian Gornick as a Notable in Best American Essays 2023. Recipient of a Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, a Fellowship from Artist Trust, and a Residencies in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest and Centrum’s Port Townsend Campus at Fort Worden, Maya has presented her work internationally at the University of Oxford (where she was a fellow in Spring 2024, as well as a visiting poet in Spring 2019) and in Madrid at the Unamuno Author Festival. She is  Professor of English for Central Washington University, and Affiliate Faculty in Poetry and Nature Writing for Western Colorado’s low-residency MFA. Maya’s memoir-in-essays, Raised by Ferns, will be out from Porphyry Press in early 2026. 

Full bio:

Maya Jewell Zeller (she/her/hers) is an essayist, poet, and writer, who grew up living in unconventional settings in the Pacific Northwest. She has taught writing and literature to a range of demographics: high school and college students, fourth graders, and senior citizens; at multiple universities, schools, conferences, and retreats, in the U.S. and abroad. A two-time writer-in-residence in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Fellow at Oxford’s St Edmund Hall, Recipient of a 2016 Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Fellowships from Washington State Artist Trust and the Centrum Foundation, and Travel Grant from the American Association of University Professors, Maya has had work translated and presented internationally in Madrid, as part of the Unamuno Author Festival (2019) and Reading Series (2018), and as a visiting writer at University of Oxford’s Meet the Poet at Teddy Hall; she has additionally won awards from Sycamore Review, New South, New Ohio Review, Dogwood,  Florida Review and Crab Orchard Review. Maya’s poems and prose have also received Notable mention in Best American Essays, been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes, Best of the Net, and other awards. 

Maya is the author of the forthcoming memoir, Raised by Ferns (Porphyry Press, 2026); the book on fungi phenomena, The Wonder of Mushrooms (AdventureKEEN, fall 2025); co-author of Advanced Poetry: A Writers Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024); co-editor of Evergreen: Grim Tales & Verses From the Gloomy Northwest (Scablands Books, 2021); and author of the poetry collections out takes/glove box (New American, 2023), Alchemy for Cells & Other Beasts (a collaboration with visual artist Carrie DeBacker; October 2017, Entre Rios Books), Rust Fish (April 2011, Lost Horse Press) and the chapbook Yesterday, the Bees (October 2015, Floating Bridge Press). Other manuscripts have been named finalists with such prizes as the National Poetry Series, University of Wisconsin Brittingham/Pollak Prize, Prairie Schooner, Waywiser, Akron Press, New Issues’ Green Rose Prize, and OSU/The Journal, Versa Editions (Amsterdam); and Maya’s poems, essays, stories, and reviews appear in journals such as Bellingham Review, West Branch, Pleiades, New Ohio Review, High Desert Journal, Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus, Willow Springs, The Moth, Booth Journal, Moss, and Rattle, as well as anthologies such as Forest Under Story, Environmental and Nature Writing, Pie & Whiskey, All We Can Hold, This is the Place: Women Writing About Home, and New Poets of the American West. Maya is Affiliate Faculty in Poetry and Nature Writing for Western Colorado University and Professor of English in the Professional and Creative Writing Program (BA and MA) for Central Washington University.

Visit the “Selected Works” to read various online samples of Maya’s work; visit “Books” to order or learn more about her titles.

You can reach Maya by email: mayajewellzeller [at] gmail [dot] com, or find her on Substack at Spores from the Northwest (where she shares free writing prompts!)

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AUTHOR PHOTOS FOR PR:

First photo: Zoey Zeller; second photo, Dean Davis. 

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