Katya Zinn

×

Expand

Renata Watson

Writer Katya Zinn with typewriter in a cemetery.

Katya Zinn

Boston-based writer and educator Katya Zinn is on tour following the release of a new collection of poetry, stories and essays, Manic-depressive Pixie Dream Girl. Find a sample of Zinn's performance poetry style in this Button Poetry video of “On Avoidance.” With poetry readings by Madison-based writers James P. Roberts, whose many books include the 2020 poetry collection One Hundred Breaths; and Rene B. Simon, author of the 2021 collection The Good Truth.

media release: Katya Zinn is a  performance poet, educator, and aspiring woodland creature currently based in the Boston-area neighborhood of Jamaica Plain.

Her first chapbook-length collection of poems, human verses, was released by Finishing Line Press in March 2021. She graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor's of Science in Expressive Art Therapy from Lesley University in 2019. In 2020, she received a  Fulbright scholarship to teach English and spoken word poetry to high-schoolers on the island of Borneo, but was unfortunately evacuated by the U.S. embassy midway through her residency when COVID hit Southeast Asia. Manic-depressive Pixie Dream Girl is her first full-length collection of stories, essays, and poems, currently available for preorder from Game Over Books.

Zinn is the winner of the Selase Williams Social Activism Through the Arts Award, first-place in the 2019 Words Aloud International poetry contest, and (more importantly) 'Bestest Teacher in the Universe,' according to a crayon certificate that lives in her wallet. When not shouting metaphors to mostly-strangers in dive bars, Katya works as a teaching artist and equity director of a children's education nonprofit, where she’s currently working on a pilot program to provide free therapeutic mentorship in the arts for children with disabilities in need of financial aid. You can find Katya on Twitter or Instagram at @zinnvisibleink, or by performing a simple conjuring spell at the next full moon.