Marissa Anne Ayala

Writer, Researcher, Artist Austin, TX

Marissa Ayala is an Austin-based writer, researcher, and artist. Informed by her Puerto Rican heritage, her work explores ecology, geology, and self in relation to place. She is currently writing a feminist hybrid docupoetic text focused on the organic and built environment, the impact of extractive colonialism, and identity in relation to the Puerto Rican diaspora. Her creative practice is somatic, multi-disciplinary, and informed by archival research, field studies, and cultural theory.

Marissa is the recipient of the 2026 In Cahoots writing residency, the 2025 Puffin Foundation environmental artist advocacy grant, and held a 2025 residency at Chulitna Lodge in Lake Clark, Alaska, where she conducted eco-conscious fieldwork for a hybrid narrative work in progress. She also participated in the grant-funded field research for the chapbook series Errant Elements, conducting art-based and cultural research in Marfa, Texas. This work led to a sound art performance and the publication of her chapbook.

Invited by the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, Marissa conducted primary research on the writings and works of key artists in color theory, deepening her understanding of the subject and its psychological impact. She held a year-long teaching artist residency at Pen + Brush Gallery, where she led creative writing workshops that used visual art to explore themes such as gender equality and literature's power to shape social change.

Her work has been featured in TELEPHONE, Errant Elements, Poets & Writers magazine, Pen + Brush Literary Magazine, fugue, Poets of Queens Anthology, and more. She founded the East Austin Writing Project, a literary arts organization that provides equitable access to arts programming for the Austin, TX community.

She earned her BA at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, her MFA in fiction at The New School, and her Master's in Science at Hunter College.