Maya Sonenberg

Maya Sonenberg is the current director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Washington. She earned her BA from Wesleyan University and her MFA from Brown University. Among her accolades are the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, first prize in the Passages North Fiction Contest, finalist for the Richard Sullivan Prize, finalist for the Andres Berger Literary Awards, among others. She is currently working on two books, a mix of fiction and nonfiction about the 1960’s and a collection of short stories about parents and children. Her second collection of short stories, Voices from the Blue Hotel, was published by Chiasmus Press in 2006.

As part of her Fellowship’s Meet the Artist requirements, Maya conducted two events in one day. She began her day at Everett Community College with Professor Kevin Craft’s creative writing class and interested members of the community, and discussed her writing process, interests and the life of a writer. Students had previously—and carefully—read a story from her recent book, Voices from the Blue Hotel, and their discussion ranged widely, from the specifics of the story they had read to where she got her ideas for stories to the moral obligations of writers. Later that evening, Maya read to a group of 30 as part of the Possession Sound Reading Series. She read three new short stories (“Childhood,” “On Seeing the Skeleton of a Whale at the Harvard Museum of Natural History,” and “Inebriate of Air”), two of which she had completed during her recent stay at the University of Washington’s Whiteley Center at Friday Harbor, made possible by her Artist Trust Fellowship.

Maya’s story, “Return of the Media Five,” received 2nd prize in the New Ohio Review fiction contest, which appeared in the Fall 2012 issue.