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Projects
Embedded Files
I published my first book when I was 13, and have been writing new stories since.
I published my first book when I was 13, and have been writing new stories since.
I write from the margins-where chaotic honesty, Black queerness, Black motherhood, authenticity, and Wonkadory humor reside. It's a look into the messy trash accumulated from ignorance and avarice. This is a tool to get a real look into Black Queer experiences. This takes the courage of realness and defying the self-deception natural in humanity. As a writer and artist, Maya promises you the very essence that makes Black Queer Lives Matter: a grand, off-kilter tapestry on a hand-stitched quilt.
Some are published and some are getting ready to be published.
Some are published and some are getting ready to be published.
My memoir envisions the lives of my family of women: my mother, Tamara; my grandmother, Levita; my grandaunt, Della; my great-grandmother, Rose; and my great-great-grandmother, Lugenia.
Each poem is based on my experience with them, the stories my family told me of their lives from Memphis, Tennessee to Chicago, Illinois. Through hybrid poetic forms and prose, original paintings and photo portraits, the text mediates on the overlapping complexities of black motherhood, the importance of holding onto family values of faith and love, the education of Africana Studies, and living for Black Feminism, overcoming many trials and tribulations, surviving their childhood, and the legacy they pass on.
It also confronts the anxiety for safety and generational trauma from surviving Antebellum, Jim Crow, racial segregation, racial violence, erasure, colorism, miscarriages, and misogyny that continues to impact their descendants down the line. This is my family genealogy through the lens of the mother and daughters.
The Sanctuary Magazine
The Sanctuary Magazine
Susquehanna University Magazine is celebrating the graduating Studio Art majors and minors. I submitted three untitled paintings under the name Maya Williamsanderson.
To what do we owe Black women? Everything. To be Black and female in America means that you are ignored, silenced, and sometimes erased. The very fabric of history would be quite different for all of us without the contributions, tears, blood, and love of Black women. As a result of the intersection of patriarchy and white supremacy, Black women are too often left exhausted, overworked, and left out of the historical narrative. This multi-modal creative work is a call to action to end the erasure of Black women with scholarship, visual art, and poetry.
Wake Up Everybody
Wake Up Everybody
WAKE UP EVERYBODY was created as part of Hill-Freedman World Academy's ongoing partnership with Philadelphia non-profit LiveConnections, which specializes in music education, arts accessibility and collaborative concerts. The collection of original student songs (and a cover of the 1970’s classic title song) is the culmination of a year-long project led by HFWA Music Technology teacher Ezechial Thurman and a team of LiveConnections teaching artists: noted songwriter/producer Andrew Lipke; Grammy nominee Kristal Oliver; past Kimmel Center jazz resident Luke Carlos O’Reilly and LiveConnections Founding Director David Bradley.
WAKE UP EVERYBODY takes its inspiration from the mission, songs and style of Philadelphia International Records, the influential label founded in 1971 by Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff which produced the renowned “Sound of Philadelphia.” Over the course of the school year, under the direction of Thurman, together with the LiveConnections teaching artists, all of HFWA’s 10th graders and a cohort of 11th and 12th graders dug into the Philadelphia International catalogue, listening to the music of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, the O’Jays, MFSB and more. Students drew inspiration from the label’s focus on “music with a message,” while also drawing on contemporary R&B, pop, and hip-hop.
I produced and sang my original song, Agony.
What's Going On
What's Going On
What’s Going On with Hill-Freedman Records? In Fall 2017, the student-led label of Hill-Freedman World Academy started preparations for its sophomore album, in collaboration with non-profit partner LiveConnections. As part of the IB Design/Music Technology curriculum of the school’s International Baccalaureate Programme, all of Hill-Freedman’s 10th and 11th graders tuned into Motown music legends like Marvin Gaye (who inspired the album’s title), Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, and the Supremes. During their year-long study of music production, under the leadership of Music Technology teacher Ezechial Thurman, students dug into song analysis (including song structure and instrumentation), joined by LiveConnections teaching artists Luke Carlos O’Reilly and Yolanda Wisher, who then launched them into writing their own poetry and lyrics. As the writing continued, songwriter/vocalist/producer Kristal Oliver joined the project as a songwriting and vocal mentor. Under Ms. Kristal’s guidance, students wrote on their own, wrote to Motown-inspired arrangements created by LiveConnections artists Mr. Luke and Andrew Lipke, and collaborated with each other on lyrics. They also composed their own music, inspired by Motown and contemporary music. Students drew inspiration from themes of love and personal struggle, while also looking at what’s going on in the world around them today. They then headed into the school’s recording studio to lay down their tracks. In blending Motown and today’s music, Hill-Freedman Records’ second installment proclaims yesterday’s sound reinvented.
I produced and sang my original song, Sensacional (Come And Dance With Me).
First Verse
First Verse
FIRST VERSE includes 29 original tracks, each combining a student-written poem with student-produced musical composition. The poems range from stories of personal struggle and family connection to meditations on love, identity and justice. The entire 10th grade at Hill-Freedman World Academy in Philadelphia, PA participated in the project, as part of the school's International Baccalaureate Programme. FIRST VERSE is the culmination of a year-long project led by Hill-Freedman music technology teacher Ezechial Thurman. The project included a residency with LiveConnections featuring City of Philadelphia Poet Laureate Yolanda Wisher and noted composer/producer Andrew Lipke. Thurman produced the album with LiveConnections Founding Director David Bradley. Hill-Freedman Principal Anthony Majewski served as executive producer.
I produced and sang my original song, Black Snake Lies.
C.L.A.W.S the Prequel
C.L.A.W.S the Prequel
Claws takes place in 2048 where humans are in a war between two realms and two sets of enemies, Westa Woles and Rosbeak. Welcome to the realm of Ptomagoten. This pre-serialization comprises an initial concept art design for the characters and their throughlines, including an epilogue for the first main story.
Upcoming Projects
The Racing Mind of the Insatiably Curious Black Femme Queer
The Racing Mind of the Insatiably Curious Black Femme Queer
My memoir, The Racing Mind of the Insatiably Curious Black Femme Queer, where blackness is queerness, and being femme is non-binary and trans, being different than one or two genders, not exclusively to women of any self-expression. It gives an intersectional illustration of a Black Femme Queer’s racing mentality, vigorous spirit, and beautiful body. Their consciousness is the narrator. The audience is the introduction.
Overcoming misogynoir, anti-blackness, and misgendering throughout their life, they voice their epiphany on loving themselves, reclaiming beauty, healing, and letting go of past traumas, reflecting on their survival, and asserting their visibility. This collective portrait of hybrid poetic and prose prompts a discussion that critically inquires about the complexities of race, nonbinary gender, size, intimate relationships, neurotypical ableism, sexual and romantic freedom, and sexuality, and how they overlap.
It draws on subjects around Africana Studies, Queer Writing, Black Feminism, Caste Studies, and Critical Race Theory. These poems are grouped into four topics: Blackness, Apoly (a sexual and/or romantic orientation), Death, and Wonkadory.
I AM THE NBA
I AM THE NBA
My independent album, I AM THE NBA, is a project that illustrates what it means to be Black Queer in America. It reemphasize blackness is queerness, and being femme is non-binary and trans, being different than one or two genders, not exclusively to women of any self-expression. It gives intersectional, genre-bending songs that are inspired by Tina Bell’s grunge, Jill Scott, Leela James & The Truth Band, R&B legends, Black Veil Brides, Skillet, Within Temptation, Disturbed, queer New Orleans bounce music legend Big Freedia, and other contemporary genres. The songs range from stories of personal struggle, meditations on self-love, intersectionality, black queer visibility, black feminism, identity, and justice, and protests against misogynoir, queerphobia, and censorship.
Spoons, against Knife and Fork
Spoons, against Knife and Fork
Spoon, against Knife and Fork, is a murder mystery set in the current time, where a small getaway is nearly deterred by three incidents: a severe asthma attack, a near-threatening overdose, and the murder of an international trans student. The group comprises 11 Black femmes, a Korean-American Trans femme, and a nonbinary person. There are two supervisors, an advisor, a professor, two chaperones, a detective out of commission, and six students. One of the students is nonbinary. One of the two chaperones is a member of an investigation agency that services BIPOC communities. The other chaperone is a mysterious international freelance investigator who takes on this case, while also working on another case involving the death of a student from the same school.
C.L.A.W.S. the official series
C.L.A.W.S. the official series
The novels are a tapestry of the narratives of characters living during the War in the Human Realm and Ptomagoten Realm, involved with the war syndicate, known as C.L.A.W.S (Canis Lupus Animalia Woles Sapien). It features humans, human Mages, and four canid shapeshifters known as Croatations navigating violent political upheavals and schemes, war casualties, systemic discriminations, and global tensions across dimensions.
The story follows the gamut run by a collage of characters: two rebellious Afro-Dominican sisters, Jessica and Rebbecca, separated by the forceful drafting of young Mages in the war fronts; a Carib American girl is tricked into being a comfort woman for rogue soldiers of C.L.A.W.S.; an intelligence agent working for the opposing war party within the syndicate; the inner workings of the opposing Croatations military soldiers, the Canidaetents, and a cat whose presence forbode future change for all who come near her. The novels span across decades, and different regions, and show many perspectives.
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