Why Work With Me ..
I'm Maya C. Popa (PhD), an award-winning writer, editor, and educational consultant with over a decade of experience teaching high school English
in an Upper-East Side private school, where I also direct the Creative Writing program. Prior to this, I spent two years teaching high-achieving NYC public school students through SEO Scholars.
I am on faculty at NYU, where I teach undergraduate poetry, and am the Poetry Reviews Editor of Publishers Weekly, the oldest trade journal in the country with an annual online readership of 14 million. My writing appears in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Nation, The New Statesman, The Huffington Post, The New Republic, and elsewhere.
As an educational consultant who has taught across three divisions, I have a unique sense of a student’s trajectory from middle to high school to college and beyond. I am adept at quickly gauging, synthesizing, and putting into practice what will work best for each student I work with, offering both carefully considered line edits and holistic college support.
Additionally, I am an avid reader of literature on the brain, adolescent psychology, and entrepreneurship and rely on these varied modalities to coach students, always keeping in mind what the next generation will need to thrive.
I follow New York Times Charles Duhigg’s teachings on well-being and the neuroscience research coming out of Huberman Lab at Stanford University.
I am the daughter of Romanian immigrants and grew up on the Upper-East Side in New York City, where I attended private schools. I have pursued multiple degrees (PhD, MFA, MSt.) in English literature and writing from Goldsmiths University (UK), Oxford University (UK), NYU, and Barnard College (Summa Cum Laude) where I was the recipient of merit scholarships, including Oxford University’s prestigious Clarendon Scholarship, where I earned a Distinction.
I am the author of two books, including ‘Wound’ is the Origin of Wonder (W.W. Norton, 2022; Picador, 2023), and three award-winning chapbooks published in the US and UK. In 2021, I was commissioned by the United Nations to deliver the opening remarks for the Day of the Girl Conference. I have spoken alongside actor Harry Belafonte at the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute benefit and was the 2017 Commencement Speaker for the Nightingale-Bamford School. In 2019, I appeared on the cover of Poets & Writers Magazine, on the radio program The Slowdown, and in John Green’s poetry project, “Ars Poetica.”
My Story..
