Mariya (Masha) Deykute

Mariya (Masha) Deykute is a Russian-American poet, translator, playwright, essayist and teacher, born in Pushchino, USSR and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She is a graduate of the UMass: Boston MFA program, and while she currently lives and teaches in the Republic of Kazakhstan, she calls New Mexico home. Mariya writes about imaginary countries, nostalgia, the persistence of history and wilderness that exists alongside and inside all of us. Her work has recently appeared in Cholla Needles, Incessant Pipe, Soundings East and an anthology zine about Tove Jansson. At the moment Mariya teaches rhetoric, composition and creative writing at Nazarbayev University and is working on completing a poetry manuscript and translating contemporary Kazakhstani poets.