About Maya
Maya Sloan grew up in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Her first novel, High Before Homeroom, will be released by Simon & Schuster Pocket Books next summer. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, as well as a MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Arkansas. In March 2010, her short story about Christian rock groupies will be featured in the 25th Anniversary Issue of Boulevard. She has also had stories published in Passages North and Driftwood. This year, Maya was one of five writers granted a Kostova Foundation fellowship to attend the Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria. Maya has also received the Writers at Work Fiction Fellowship, Boston University’s Inaugural Saul Bellow Literary Prize and a St. Bolotoph Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. While at University of Arkansas, Maya received a Walton Foundation Creative Writing Fellowship, a Lilly Peter Fiction Prize, a Bill Harrison Best Thesis Award, and two nominations for Best New American Voice. Maya has been granted residencies from the Vermont Studio Center and Byrdcliffe Artists Colony. As a teacher, Maya was a Boston University Scholar under the direction of Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. She has taught at nine universities including Temple, Philadelphia University, the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, and Lincoln, the nation’s first African-American university. Currently, Maya is an adjunct professor in literature and film at Pepperdine University.
The Unofficial Bio of Maya Sloan
Maya grew up in Oklahoma. She wrote disturbing shit from an early age:
She was on one the only Jews to attend Bishop McGuinness Catholic High School, where senior year she took Sex Education from a nun.
Maya has lived in New York City, Los Angeles, London, Massachusetts, Philly and Arkansas. This is the fake ID she bought at 19 from some guy in the back of a luggage store in Times Square:
This is the back:
For a long time, Maya wanted to be an actress. She once played Hermia in a Latino version of Midsummer Nights’ Dream at the Hollywood Bowl in LA, where she served as comic relief by butchering the Spanish. Maya got her Screen Actors Guild card for appearing in an anti-smoking Public Service Announcement in which she played The Bad Kid Who Smokes.
While pursuing acting, Maya worker several years as a babysitter for the children of celebrities. She once babysat for Harrison Ford, and still feels guilty about fondling his People’s Choice Award and hopes the security cameras didn’t catch it. Besides babysitting, Maya has worked as a performer at over 500 children’s parties, specializing in clown and Princess characters. Her first party was as Winnie The Pooh at a park in Compton… and she still has the mental and emotional scars to show for it.
While a college student at Boston University, Maya took a fiction writing class because she knew she could write and figured it would be an easy A. She wrote her first story the night before it was due, and her teacher, Leslie Epstein, gave her an honest critique. He said she was a natural writer with the gift, the spark. He also said, It is up to you what to decide what to do with with it (because) You are lazy.
Maya was really pissed off at the time, and her response was fuck you, it doesn’t matter what you think because I know I can write. Also, besides, I’m gonna be an actor.
It took her a long time to figure out that he was right. In fact, she went back to Boston University to study under the same guy in 2007. She is proud to say, despite her many flaws, when it comes to her writing she is no longer lazy.
Maya does extensive research for her fiction, which has put her in several unique, unorthodox, and occasionally dangerous situations. This year alone, she participated in a high-speed paparazzo chase through Beverly Hills in pursuit of Katie Holmes, was forcibly removed from the red carpet at a high-profile Hollywood function, visited a brothel in Mexico, and, in celebration of her book publication, got a tattoo on a reality show, which she is not allowed to speak of now and which might or might not air. Either way, it is a good story, which she will tell when she is given official permission.
In conclusion, Maya can be overly sensitive, neurotic, and a drama queen. She often holds grudges longer than necessary and acts before she thinks. She also has a sick sense of humor, a lot of optimism, and incredible loyalty towards those she loves.
She is deeply flawed, but figures she can use I’m a writer as an excuse.
Which is why you should by her book. So she’ll have an excuse.
