Welcome to my world.

About me

Poet, translator, and memoirist Maria Nazos grew up in Athens, Greece, and Joliet, Illinois. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, TriQuarterly, World Literature Today, Columbia Review, American Life in Poetry, and elsewhere.

She is the author of four books: PULSE (Omnidawn, 2026); a collection of translated poems entitled The Slow Horizon that Breathes (World Poetry Books, 2023) from the poet Dimitra Kotoula; Still Life (dancing girl press, 2016); and A Hymn that Meanders (Wising Up Press, 2011).

Her work has appeared in renowned anthologies, including What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (Northwestern University Press, 2020), edited by Martín Espada, and Nasty Women, An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, edited by Grace Bauer and Julie Kane, (Lost Horse Press, 2017).

She has received an Academy of American Poets Award, a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from The Sewanee Writers’ Conference, scholarships from The Santa Fe Art Institute, The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, The Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and fellowships from The University of Nebraska, The Vermont Studio Center, The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Maria has worked almost every job imaginable, including as a whale watch boat attendant, table dancer, teacher, barista, sunglass salesperson, bartender, and probably the worst waitress in the entire history of the Eastern seaboard. If she spilled Pinot Noir on you, she apologizes.

She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her (usually) patient Bernie Bro US veteran husband, and two crazy cats.