<poet>

Maya Salameh is the author of Mermaid Theory (Haymarket Books, 2026), HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE (University of Arkansas Press, 2022), winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize and finalist for the California Book Award, and chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020).

<performer>

Maya has performed at venues including Carnegie Hall, the DeYoung Museum, and her mother's kitchen. She is a 2025 NEA Fellow, 2025 Tin House Scholar, 2024 Sewanee Writers' Conference Fellow and 2023 Winner of the Markowitz Award for Exceptional New Writers.

<teaching artist>

Maya has taught writing and poetry for over a decade, facilitating more than 70 workshops reaching hundreds of students. She has taught across multiple creative roles, most recently with Brooklyn Poets, Ellipsis Writing, and Workshops for Gaza.

listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist · listen to the MT playlist ·

"By defiling the clinical nature of the algorithm, bringing it into the visceral, gory reality of our bodies, we render it also a body that we can challenge and question."

"How do we stare back at appliances of the surveillance state? How do we begin to say, the computer is not infallible, the algorithm is riddled with bugs we can pick at and opinions that can be rewritten. One important space of freedom for me was interacting with technological forms in more rambunctious ways, imposing play on the algorithm."

"Part of what makes the book’s programing framework so effective is Salameh's experimentation with verbs, which calls our attention to the way words operate on our minds as bits of code that we, in turn, process."