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Maya Gittelman

Biography

Maya Gittelman


Maya Gittelman is an activist, blogger and writer. She graduated Skidmore College cum laude with a degree in English and a minor in Education, with a concentration on special education. She was awarded senior honors for her thesis on late Victorian masculinities, and her senior year novella received the 2014 departmental prize for fiction.

Her literary interests span classical, medieval, Victorian, genre and contemporary. Maya's favorite authors range from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Chaucer, Lord Byron to Janet Mock, James Joyce to J.M. Barrie, to Tolkien and beyond. Versed in theory, her true passions lie in examining and deconstructing the literary and sociocultural intersections of race, class, sexuality, gender, ethnicity and ability --- throughout classical and contemporary canons.

Formerly the events and special projects manager at a Manhattan branch of Barnes & Noble, she now works in independent publishing. When she's not reading, writing or ranting, she's probably working on social justice crafts, eating something drenched in chocolate, or getting altogether too emotionally invested in a TV show.

Maya Gittelman

Reviews by Maya Gittelman

by Nina LaCour - Fiction

Sara Foster runs away from home at 16, leaving behind the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy. Years later, in Los Angeles, she is a sought-after bartender, renowned as much for her brilliant cocktails as for the mystery that clings to her. Across the city, Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern, yearning for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena. The morning Emilie and Sara first meet at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But soon Sara's old life catches up to her, upending everything she thought she wanted, just as Emilie has finally gained her own sense of purpose. Will their love be more powerful than their pasts?

by Ocean Vuong - Nonfiction, Poetry

In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel ON EARTH WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.

by Freya Marske - Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fantasy, Historical Fiction

Robin Blyth is the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents’ excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what’s been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he’s always known. Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that come with it --- not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles --- and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep.

by Becky Chambers - Adventure, Fiction, Science Fiction

It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They're going to need to ask it a lot.

by Nghi Vo - Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fantasy, Historical Fiction

Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society. She has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her. But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.

by Casey McQuiston - Comedy, Fiction, Humor, Romance, Women's Fiction

For cynical 23-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. There’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures. But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train. Jane. Her subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her.

by Mia P. Manansala - Fiction, Mystery

When Lila Macapagal moves back home to recover from a horrible breakup, her life seems to be following all the typical rom-com tropes. She's tasked with saving her Tita Rosie's failing restaurant, and she has to deal with a group of matchmaking aunties who shower her with love and judgment. But when a notoriously nasty food critic (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead moments after a confrontation with Lila, her life quickly swerves from a Nora Ephron romp to an Agatha Christie case. With the cops treating her like she's the one and only suspect, and the shady landlord looking to finally kick the Macapagal family out and resell the storefront, Lila is left with no choice but to conduct her own investigation.

by Jesse Q. Sutanto - Fiction, Humor

When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding that Meddy, her Ma and aunties are working. It's the biggest job yet for the family wedding business, and not even an unsavory corpse will get in the way of her auntie's perfect buttercream flowers. But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy's great college love --- and biggest heartbreak --- makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos.

by Kaitlyn Greenidge - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Coming of age in a free Black community in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, Libertie Sampson is all too aware that her mother, a physician, has a vision for their future together: Libertie is to go to medical school and practice alongside her. But Libertie is hungry for something else. Is there really only one way to be independent? And she is constantly reminded that, unlike her light-skinned mother, she will not be able to pass for white. When a young man from Haiti proposes to Libertie and promises a better life on the island, she accepts, only to discover that she is still subordinate to him and all men. As she tries to parse what freedom actually means for a Black woman, Libertie struggles with where she might find it --- for herself and for generations to come.

by Everina Maxwell - Fiction, Science Fiction, Space Opera

Prince Kiem, a famously disappointing minor royal and the Emperor's least favorite grandchild, has been called upon to be useful for once. He's commanded to fulfill an obligation of marriage to the representative of the Empire's newest and most rebellious vassal planet. His future husband, Count Jainan, is a widower and murder suspect. Neither wants to be wed, but with a conspiracy unfolding around them and the fate of the empire at stake, they will have to navigate the thorns and barbs of court intrigue, the machinations of war and the long shadows of Jainan's past. And they'll have to do it together. So begins a legendary love story amid the stars.