Maya Kapoor - 2017

Maya L. Kapoor graduated in 2015 with an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona. While enrolled at the UA, Maya became founding president of Many Voices, a student club dedicated to supporting the social and professional needs of creative writing students of color. Maya worked in field biology and environmental education for more than a decade and holds a master's in biology from Arizona State University.

These days, Maya lives in Tucson where she works in science communications and in fostering intersections between the arts and environmental research. Maya's writing is published or forthcoming in An Essay Daily Reader (Coffee House Press); The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide (University of Arizona Press); ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment; Edible Baja Arizona; and Terrain.org.

​As writer-in-residence, Maya will work on a collection of essays about nature in the urbanizing West, focusing on the uncharismatic or under-appreciated species existing in the marginal spaces where city and desert blur together.