Mai Schwartz
Mai Schwartz is a poet, a storyteller, a sometime carpenter, an unofficial historian, and a native of New Jersey with lots of opinions about diners and malls. Based in West Philly for the last five years, Mai can often be found writing and performing with the Rogue Workshop, editing APIARY Magazine, and tending beehives at Bartram’s Garden.
Awarded Grants
2018
Window of Opportunity Grant (WOO)
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Overview
Mai will attend a writing workshop taught by activist, teacher and writer Sarah Schulman at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) in July. The workshop, titled Witness, Express, and Represent is for writers "working on witnessing our extraordinary time, expressing the experience of living now in the context of others." By attending this workshop during FAWC's Social Justice Week, Mai will connect with other writers who are deeply engaged in activist work, receive direct critical feedback on works-in-progress, and possibly find new readers to grow work that deals directly with gender and the trans experience.
2014
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
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Overview
Mai will translate Austria-Hungary, a poetry collection by Argentinian writer and activist Néstor Perlongher, which deals with nationalism, state violence, and queer resistance. Never before published in English, this translation will preserve Perlongher’s work while offering understanding among queer and trans people within a movement for self-determination. By creating this chapbook, Mai will contribute to conversations within gender-variant communities and add to the arsenal of creative responses to violence.
