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photo by Leilani Nisperos
photo by Leilani Nisperos

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Maiana Minahal is a poet, interdisciplinary artist and educator.  She is the author of the poetry collection Legend Sondayo (Civil Defense Poetry 2009), and of the chapbooks closer and Sitting Inside Wonder (Monkey Press 2003).  She was born in Manila and currently lives in Oakland, where she teaches writing.  In Fall 2009, she will teach in the English Department at the University of Minnesota.

Minahal received her MFA from Antioch University; she was formerly director of the Poetry for the People program at the University of California, Berkeley.  Her essays are forthcoming in the anthologies Reclaiming the Now (ed. Strobel, Ateneo de Davao University Press) and Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic (ed. Jones, University of Texas Press).  Her work has most recently been published in Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds (ed. Sweeney, City Lights Press), Going Home to a Landscape (ed. Villanueva, Calyx Press), Screaming Monkeys (ed. Galang, Coffee House Press) and Berkeley Poetry Review (no. 37).  As an interdisciplinary artist, she created a collaborative, multimedia performance called before their words that combined poetic narrative with pre-colonial Philippine cultural traditions.  Minahal has performed and taught poetry workshops throughout the US and in the Philippines.