Maia Evrona is a poet, prose writer and translator of Yiddish literature. She has been called a representative of a “new generation of Yiddish poet-translators.”

Originally from Massachusetts, she grew up with a serious illness. After having been too ill to attend secondary school and college, she was accepted into an MFA program in creative writing at the age of twenty, without a bachelor’s degree. Since then, she has published her poetry, as well as excerpts from her memoir on illness, in Prairie Schooner, the North American Review and elsewhere. In 2019, she was the inaugural recipient of the joint Spain-Greece Fulbright Scholar Award, given to support her poetry. She again served as a Fulbright Scholar to Spain and Greece in 2021-22.

Her translations of the Ukraine-born poet Yosef Kerler, From a Bird’s Cage to a Thin Branch were published by White Goat Press in 2023. Her translations of Avrom Sutzkever have garnered a significant following and have received fellowships in translation from the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Literary Translators Association. She has also published translations of Anna Margolin, Celia Dropkin and others, as well as her own poetry in her own English to Yiddish translation.

When not working in poetry or creative non-fiction, she publishes literary and cultural criticism. Like many writers, she wishes she were really a singer. She manages that longing by treating her poetry readings like borderline musical performances. She has given readings of her work in New York City, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

She also dances Argentine tango.

If you would like to support Maia Evrona’s work, you can do so via her paypal tipjar, or through tax-deductible donations to the Congress for Jewish Culture, a 75 year-old organization promoting Yiddish culture. Contact kongress@earthlink.net and specify that you would like to support the work of Maia Evrona. You can also subscribe to her Patreon account via this link.