Award-winning, Pushcart-nominated writer Maia Brown-Jackson is a symphony of papercuts, banged-up knees, and stubborn determination. She believes in the altruism of strangers, the power of direct action, and the Oxford comma. Her work has taken her everywhere from art galleries and museums to a nonproliferation nonprofit to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Her second poetry collection, Gifted, will open for pre-orders this autumn with Nymeria Publishing. In her spare time, she volunteers with a Yazidi NGO, accidentally starts learning quantum physics when she looks up the qualities of neutrinos for a poem, and plays with the world’s sweetest, clumsiest cat.