BIO
Maurisa Thompson was born and raised in San Francisco, and is a proud alum of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People. A poet and educator, she is a graduate of UC Riverside’s MFA program and is currently a high school teacher in San Francisco. Her poetry has appeared in The Pedestal Magazine, The Black Scholar, La Bloga, Cosmonauts Avenue, The City is Already Speaking, the anthologies A Feather Floating on the Water: Poems for Our Children and Poesia En Vuelo, and The Haight-Ashbury Journal, which nominated her for a Pushcart Prize. She has collaborated with arts organizations including Richmond's RAW Talent and the Gluck Fellowship program at UC Riverside, and is an alum of VONA, Tin House, CSU Summer Arts, and Napa Valley Writers workshops. Works in progress include her first poetry manuscript that combines history and folklore with her grandparents’ stories from Louisiana and San Francisco, and a middle-grade novel exploring police brutality, which won the support of a Walter Grant from We Need Diverse Books.
"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
Toni Morrison
