A lecturer in poetry at Smith and an Ada ’87, Maya Janson
describes herself as a poet who looks “inward and outward at the same time.” In her debut collection, Murmur & Crush, images etch memory and landscape into indelible emotional content, and inner flux is made just as transparent as the world changing around us. David Rivard praises the book for its “total acceptance of the as-is world, seduced into being by that beautiful tag team, Bemusement and Sorrow.” Janson’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Rattle, Lyric, Guernica, Alaska Quarterly Review, Jubilat, and Best American Poetry. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and has been a recipient of an artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.