Maya Jewell Zeller

Maya Jewell Zeller is a multi-genre, multidisciplinary writer and collaborator, working to develop empathy and collapse boundaries between hierarchies and species. Her work often embeds science, the deep wild, and imaginative language across the field of the page and stage, with other artists and thinkers, performing publicly to inspire change of oppressive systems. Her most recent authored works are out takes/ glove box (November 2023), chosen by Eduardo Corral as winner of the New American Poetry Prize, and the interdisciplinary collaboration (with Seattle visual artist Carrie DeBacker) Alchemy For Cells & Other Beasts (Entre Rios Books, 2017). Maya is also 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 anthology Evergreen: Grim Tales and Verses from the Gloomy Northwest (Scablands Books, 2021). These collections lift a range of voices and expand permission, some of Maya’s artistic goals. Also in this vein, her work as an artist dovetails her work as a teacher and vice versa: she is Associate Professor of English for Central Washington University, and Affiliate Faculty in Poetry and Nature Writing for Western Colorado’s low-residency MFA; you can also find her teaching for Centrum’s Port Townsend Writers’ Conference and other venues for community education. Maya lives in the Inland Northwest with her two children and their cats.