poet, performer, teaching artist.

Maya Salameh is a Syrian- and Lebanese-American poet from San Diego, California. She 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, as well as the chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in The Rumpus, Poetry, The Offing, Gulf Coast, AGNI, 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 National Endowment for the Arts, Tin House Writers' Workshop, Kenyon Review Writers' Workshop, Sewanee Writers' Conference, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference,  Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, William Male 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.

Maya graduated from Stanford in 2022 with a B.A. in Psychology with double minors in Studies of Race & Ethnicity and Poetry. For 3 years, she served as the Co-Chair and Community Organizer of 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 also 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.

Maya has taught writing and poetry since she was in high school, most recently a series of workshops with Workshops for Gaza. For most of her childhood, she volunteered as a folkloric performer and choreographer in her parish’s annual Lebanese festival, performing dabke and selling knafeh. She enjoys swimming, world history, and copious amounts of Love Island.