About Mara

Mara M Jebsen is a poet, performer and professor. Her work can be found in The American Poetry Review, jubilat, Broadsided Press, Hanging Loose Press, Painted Bride Quarterly, Transitions Magazine, Boxcar Poetry Review and fogged clarity.

Mara serves on the faculty of New York University in the Expository Writing Program, where she specializes in teaching essay-writing to artists in the Tisch Department of Arts and Public Policy. A 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow and alum of NYU's MFA program, Mara spent her post college decade as a member of the louderArts Project, a vibrant performance-oriented poetry community. She is the author of "Alphabet," a chapbook published in 2016.

Raised by a Norwegian-American mother and Togolese step-father in Cotonou, Benin; Philadelphia, PA and Lome, Togo, Mara is the daughter of folklorists and eldest sibling of a large family. She lives in Brooklyn with her beloved and Edna, a crabapple tree.