K A T I E M A R Y A
Hello. I’m a writer and teacher. I primarly write and teach poetry and creative nonfiction in English, but I begin my career as a high school Spanish teacher. Beyond the page, I am often dancing and looking for ways to colloborate across artistic mediums. For me, the act of writing is a deeply embodied practice.
Sugar Work, my debut poetry collection, was selected as the Editor’s Choice for the 2020 Alice James Book Award.
I’ve been working on a second collection of poems titled DRUM. It’s about grief, the history of the drumkit, and dance in the Caribbean and Southern United States. My origin story begins in Atlanta, Georgia where my father played and built drum sets.
I also work as a literary translator. Animal Spiral, my translation of Luis Othoniel Rosa’s novel El gato en el remolino was published by Charco Press in June 2026, and I have completed a translation of Nicole Cecilia Delgado’s pivotal poetry collection añosluz (2010). We are currently seeking a publisher for a bilingual edition. Delgado is the founder and co-director of La Impresora, a small-scale editorial studio and poetry press in Isabela, Puerto Rico. More about that beautiful work here.
I earned my BA in Spanish from Westmont College, an MFA in Poetry from Bennington College, and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where I taught for three years as a the Assistant Director of Composition. Currently, I work as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Murray State University in Kentucky.
Fotos are mine, taken on a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye for a small, ongoing, and unsophisticated photography project. ❤︎
Sugar Work, my debut poetry collection, was selected as the Editor’s Choice for the 2020 Alice James Book Award.
I’ve been working on a second collection of poems titled DRUM. It’s about grief, the history of the drumkit, and dance in the Caribbean and Southern United States. My origin story begins in Atlanta, Georgia where my father played and built drum sets.
I also work as a literary translator. Animal Spiral, my translation of Luis Othoniel Rosa’s novel El gato en el remolino was published by Charco Press in June 2026, and I have completed a translation of Nicole Cecilia Delgado’s pivotal poetry collection añosluz (2010). We are currently seeking a publisher for a bilingual edition. Delgado is the founder and co-director of La Impresora, a small-scale editorial studio and poetry press in Isabela, Puerto Rico. More about that beautiful work here.
I earned my BA in Spanish from Westmont College, an MFA in Poetry from Bennington College, and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where I taught for three years as a the Assistant Director of Composition. Currently, I work as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Murray State University in Kentucky.
Fotos are mine, taken on a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye for a small, ongoing, and unsophisticated photography project. ❤︎
