Tayyba Maya Kanwal is a Pakistani-American writer from Houston, TX. Her work appears in Witness Magazine, Meridian, Juxtaprose, Quarterly West and other journals, has been anthologized by The Doctor TJ Eckleburg Review, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is a 2022 Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction winner, Witness Magazine 2022 Literary Awards runner-up, CRAFT 2021 Fiction Elements Contest finalist, a University of Houston Creative Writing MFA Program Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow, and a scholar at the 2022 Sewanee Writers' Conference and 2022 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She holds an MS in Mathematics from the University of Oregon. She is working on a linked short story collection and a novel. Tayyba is Fiction Editor at Gulf Coast Journal. You can find her on Twitter @mayakanwal

Website: http://mayakanwal.com

Twitter Username: @mayakanwal

Publications

• Mehr , Meridian (May 2022)
• Talking with Boys , Witness (March 2022)
• A Legal Alien , Fireside Fiction (January 2018)
• Pruned Branches , Crab Fat Magazine “Best of Anthology” (June 2017)
• Little Mother , Juxtaprose (September 2016)
• I Breathed You First , The Fem (August 2016)
• Along the Path To Citizenship , Eckleburg Review Anthology No. 19 (October 2015)
• Our Week in Errata , The Nervous Breakdown (June 2015)
• Here's The Thing , The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review (February 6, 2014)
• Mailee and the Saint of Horses , Quarterly West (November 2013)

Awards

• Witness Literary Awards Runner Up(2022)
• Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction(2022)
• CRAFT Fiction Elements Contest Finalist(2021)
• Women in the Visual and Literary Arts(2013)

Employment

• Fiction Editor at Gulf Coast: A Journal of Fine Arts and Literature (August 2021 - )
• Assistant Fiction Editor at Gulf Coast: A Journal of Fine Arts and Literature (August 2020 - July 2021)
• Chief Content Officer and Editor at Flashread: A mobile application for text messenger stories (January 2017 - July 2020)
• Literary Arts Organization Cofounder, Program Manager, Financial Manager at Fuente Collective (March 2017 - December 2018)
• Theater Arts Organization Cofounder, Managing Director at Next Iteration Theater Company (January 2016 - February 2017)

Degrees

• Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from University of Rochester (May 1994)
• Master of Science in Mathematics from University of Oregon (June 1997)

Genres of Interest

Fiction, Creative nonfiction