Poet, performer, teaching artist.
Maya Salameh is a Syrian- and Lebanese-American poet from San Diego, California. She is the author of 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, as well as the chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in POETRY, The Rumpus, AGNI, The Offing, Gulf Coast, ANMLY, and the LA Times, among others. She has performed her work at Carnegie Hall, the DeYoung Museum, and the Obama White House.
Maya has received support in the form of residencies, fellowships, and grants from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, the Institute for Diversity in Arts, the Markaz Resource Center, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the William Male Foundation, the Herb Alpert Foundation, Stanford's Office for Religious & Spiritual Life, and the President’s Committee on the Arts & Humanities. From 2016-2017, she served as a National Student Poet, America's highest honor for youth poets, appointed by the Library of Congress. She is the winner of the Judith Markowitz Award for Exceptional New Writers and has been named a finalist for the Omnidawn Poetry 1st/2nd Book Contest, Michael Waters Poetry Prize, Claire Keyes Poetry Award, Pamet River Prize, Sublingua Prize for Poetry, Elinor Benedict Prize, and Anzaldúa Poetry Prize. She is fluent in French and Spanish and a heritage speaker of Arabic.
Maya graduated from Stanford in 2022 with a B.A. in Psychology with double minors in Studies of Race & Ethnicity and Poetry. She also earned an M.A. in Sociology, receiving the Alumni Award of Excellence and the Asian American Association Special Achievement Award. For 3 years, she served as an Artist Fellow, Co-Chair, and Community Organizer with Stanford’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts, where she oversaw arts programming and led 2 cohorts of 10 Artist Fellows in developing creative capstone projects. She served as the the Markaz Resource Center’s Inaugural Artist in Residence, where she pitched, developed, and made sustainable the Center’s Artist in Residence program and launched the Creative Community Archive, a program commissioning 50 student artists’ work. From 2019-2021, she also served as MINT Magazine’s Poetry Director and Spoken Word Collective’s Workshop Chair.
Maya has worked as an arts instructor since high school. In Jan-June 2017, she served as a poetry instructor at Izcali, a performance arts collective for first generation youth in San Diego. From Mar-June 2022, she served as the lead teaching assistant for Reading and embodying the works of bell hooks, where she co-facilitated weekly classes focused on creative writing, movement improvisation, and theory critique. From Jun-Aug 2023, she led a summer poetry workshop for high schoolers titled Writing Race & Technology: the poet as archive & witness. From 2007-2019, she volunteered as a folkloric performer and choreographer in her parish’s annual Lebanese festival, performing dabke and selling knafeh.
Maya currently leads yasmeen, a virtual Arab makers’ collective, and is working on her third collection.
Maya has received support in the form of residencies, fellowships, and grants from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, the Institute for Diversity in Arts, the Markaz Resource Center, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the William Male Foundation, the Herb Alpert Foundation, Stanford's Office for Religious & Spiritual Life, and the President’s Committee on the Arts & Humanities. From 2016-2017, she served as a National Student Poet, America's highest honor for youth poets, appointed by the Library of Congress. She is the winner of the Judith Markowitz Award for Exceptional New Writers and has been named a finalist for the Omnidawn Poetry 1st/2nd Book Contest, Michael Waters Poetry Prize, Claire Keyes Poetry Award, Pamet River Prize, Sublingua Prize for Poetry, Elinor Benedict Prize, and Anzaldúa Poetry Prize. She is fluent in French and Spanish and a heritage speaker of Arabic.
Maya graduated from Stanford in 2022 with a B.A. in Psychology with double minors in Studies of Race & Ethnicity and Poetry. She also earned an M.A. in Sociology, receiving the Alumni Award of Excellence and the Asian American Association Special Achievement Award. For 3 years, she served as an Artist Fellow, Co-Chair, and Community Organizer with Stanford’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts, where she oversaw arts programming and led 2 cohorts of 10 Artist Fellows in developing creative capstone projects. She served as the the Markaz Resource Center’s Inaugural Artist in Residence, where she pitched, developed, and made sustainable the Center’s Artist in Residence program and launched the Creative Community Archive, a program commissioning 50 student artists’ work. From 2019-2021, she also served as MINT Magazine’s Poetry Director and Spoken Word Collective’s Workshop Chair.
Maya has worked as an arts instructor since high school. In Jan-June 2017, she served as a poetry instructor at Izcali, a performance arts collective for first generation youth in San Diego. From Mar-June 2022, she served as the lead teaching assistant for Reading and embodying the works of bell hooks, where she co-facilitated weekly classes focused on creative writing, movement improvisation, and theory critique. From Jun-Aug 2023, she led a summer poetry workshop for high schoolers titled Writing Race & Technology: the poet as archive & witness. From 2007-2019, she volunteered as a folkloric performer and choreographer in her parish’s annual Lebanese festival, performing dabke and selling knafeh.
Maya currently leads yasmeen, a virtual Arab makers’ collective, and is working on her third collection.
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