Maya Jewell-Zeller (she/her/hers) grew up in the 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, Recipient of a 2016 Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts 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 essays have also been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes, Best of the Net, and other awards. 

Maya is the author of the poetry collections 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 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, 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, All We Can Hold, and New Poets of the American West. 

Maya serves as Poetry Editor for Scablands Books and Associate Professor 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 one of her collections.

You can reach Maya by email: mayajewellzeller [at] gmail [dot] com, or find her on Twitter @MayaJZeller

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IF YOU NEED A BIO FOR PR PURPOSES, here is a short(er) version:

Maya Jewell-Zeller is the author of 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); as well as co-editor, with Sharma Shields, of the anthology Evergreen: Grim Tales and Fables from the Gloomy Northwest (Scablands Books, 2021). Maya’s prose appears in such places as The Rumpus, Brevity, Bellingham Review, and Booth Journal. Recipient of a Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation as well as a Residency in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Maya has presented her work internationally at the University of Oxford and in Madrid at the Unamuno Author Festival. Currently, she is Associate Professor of English for Central Washington University, Affiliate Faculty for Western Colorado’s low-residency MFA, and Poetry Editor for Scablands Books. Her WIPs are a memoir called “Raised by Ferns,” as well as an academic textbook, “Advanced Poetry: A Craft Guide and Anthology,” under contract with Bloomsbury (UK). Find Maya on Twitter @MayaJZeller.

AUTHOR PHOTO FOR PR:

Photo by Dean Davis, for Pictures of Poets. 

On Twitter, I’m @MayaJZeller

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