91´ÎÔª

Mayah DeMartino is a writer and visual artist from Colorado's Front Range. With training in legal writing, relief printmaking, queer scholarship, and lyrical prose, DeMartino's work is a multimodal and multidimensional creative assemblage.  

Their work has been published in Washington Square Review, Camas Magazine, and others, and they were selected as one of the 2025 Artists-In-Residence at Zootown Arts Community Center. DeMartino is an MFA candidate at the 91´ÎÔª's Creative Writing Program where they serve as Nonfiction Editor of Cutbank, Montana's oldest literary magazine, and co-chair of the Second Wind Reading Series. DeMartino lives in Missoula, where they mostly spend a great deal of time watching the river go by. 

 PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Mayah DeMartino’s MFA thesis, Versus, is an auto-theoretical prose investigation that balances critical research and scholarship, original visual art, and lyric essay storytelling. The project integrates a broad scope of outside topics ranging from volcanology, contemporary horror films, early child development, addiction, gender theory, and idealist philosophy as a means to better understand the self as affected by trauma, both personal and familial. Versus is experimental both in form and in content and seeks to integrate studies of disability politics and rhetoric, gender theory, and contemporary trauma narratives. The project moves between scholarly exposition, scenes in memoir, and intertwined reflection, which culminates in a body of work that ultimately asks its reader to consider the resulting effects and alterations that often follow traumatic events.