Image of Marissa - curly hair, colorful dress, smiling

Marissa Anne Ayala is a poet & artist based in Austin, TX. Her poetry combines language and visual art crafting color-drenched narratives informed by color-theory.  Her work has appeared in Poets of Queens Anthology, Fugue Literary Journal, Pen + Brush Literary Magazine, Pen + Brush Art Gallery, Tupelo Press, & more. She was featured in Poets & Writers March/April 2022 discussing her work leading the East Austin Writing Project. Marissa earned her BA from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and her MFA from The New School.

Publications, Exhibits, & Studies

Poets & Writers Magazine, 2022.

The Many Different Kinds of Writers Groups interview

Poets of Queens Anthology, 2020. poetry

  • This Girl

  • The Arrangement

  • Cow’s Skull: Red, White & Blue

  • The Kiss of the Surrealist Mind

Pen & Brush In Print, 2018.

Hunts Point poetry

Fugue Literary Journal, 2018.

Open for Breathing poetry, photography & collage

Kolaj Magazine, 2018. mixed media collage

Handwritten, 2017.

Inside/Outside: A map of Self and Place multi-media collaboration with Merete Mueller

Pen + Brush Gallery, 2017.

Postcard Project multi-media sound/collage installation with Merete Mueller

Tupelo Press, 2016.

Leila & John poetry

Homeschool Poetry Conference

Home School welcomes poets seeking to redefine their practice through a radical consideration of the others arts—painting, music, cinema, dance, new media and so much more. The essence of the program consists of daily writing workshops, studio visits with guest artists as well as nightly readings by visiting poets. Home School is a concentrated, unique engagement between poetry and the arts partnering with the thriving arts communities of Hudson and Miami.

The New School, MFA Creative Writing, Fiction

Naropa University, BA Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Experimental Fiction

Writing comes like the wind. It’s naked, it’s made of ink, it’s the thing written, and it passes like nothing else passes in life, nothing more, except life itself.

- Marguerite Duras

Next
Next

East Austin Writing Project