I’m Maya C. Popa, writer, a longtime Editor at Publishers Weekly, and founder of Conscious Writers Collective, an online writing community and platform. I routinely teach in the undergraduate and MFA programs at NYU and have guest-taught widely across universities in the US and UK.
There are many writing programs on the internet. Finding the one that aligns with your goals, the offers the kind of rigorous coursework that will propel you forward, and whose members share your value and commitment to writing is essential.
What sets CWC apart? Some members have already published award-winning books. Others are longtime readers who are only formalizing their practice for the first time. All writers in CWC deepen their craft through craft sessions led by award-winning writers, structured guidance, and a supportive community.
CWC is unique in its emphasis on mindset coaching for longterm success in the field and its commitment to offering transparent and specialized conversations with top agents, editors, and publishers.
I meet with all of our writers up to 10x/month across our two branches of programming. team of community experts, we help writers build a sustainable, fulfilling writing practice at every stage in their journey.
If you’ve been considering getting an MFA or if you completed an MFA and don’t know what’s next, I hope you will consider joining me in CWC.
Why I started this newsletter (for me and for you):
This newsletter is for everyone: poets and non-poets, readers and non-readers. If you’re human, if you sometimes feel bewildered, overwhelmed, ecstatic, uneasy, contented, alert, uneasy—then yours is the mind I wish to invite into the small, crystalline feeling-world of poetry.
Poetry Today is where I reflect on my great passion for poetry, wonder, and mindset, with a nice helping of apocryphal and weird literary stuff sprinkled in (see: Emily Dickinson’s gingerbread recipe). Part of my mission is to debunk the notion that academic research is inaccessible or riddled with jargon, or that poetry is “hard.” I share tidbits of my PhD on the role of wonder and excerpts of essays and reviews I’m writing for Poetry and elsewhere in an accessible way—otherwise, truly, what is the point.
Each Friday, I curate Poems for Your Weekend (PoetryRx), a round up of poems based on a particular situation or condition. For example, “Poems to treat the winter blues.”
I guarantee that there’s a poem waiting to speak to OR be written by you. I want to help you find each other.
My Writing
My most recent collection is Wound is the Origin of Wonder from W. W. Norton.
Here are some lovely things writers I admire have said about it…
