Maya Caspari

I am a researcher and writer, based in London and York.

My poetry book is Almost, with Tenderness (Out-Spoken, 2025).

My forthcoming monograph is Reading Frictions: Memory, Violence, and the Politics of Touch in Contemporary World Literature (2027).

I am a Lecturer in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, where I teach modules on postcolonial and world literatures, poetry, and the creative industries.

Prior to my role at York, I worked in various arts, cultural, and research organisations. This included curating ‘Forms, Voices, Networks: Feminism and the Media’: an exhibition exploring 20th century feminist activism in Britain, Germany, and India.

 
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Research

My background is in comparative literary studies, but my work is interdisciplinary. Recent work explores the ethics and politics of research and writing in the contemporary moment.

Reading Frictions: Memory, Violence, and the Politics of Touch in Contemporary World Literature (forthcoming, 2027) discusses how contemporary writers experiment with touch and speculation to remember diverse histories of modern violence and imagine anti-colonial forms of relation in the present.

I have also written about various topics including decolonial feminisms (parallax ‘Reading Otherwise’); techno-touch in Afrofuturist film (The Senses & Society); ‘subjunctive’ remembering (Berghahn Books); Han Kang’s The Vegetarian’s re-imagining of postcolonial resistance (Journal of Postcolonial Writing); and the ethics of contingency and care in exhibition curation (Women’s History Review).

Writing

Almost, With Tenderness was published by Out-Spoken Press in 2025

‘an accomplished debut…deliberate and exacting work’ (Poetry Review)

’Maya Caspari’s Almost, with Tenderness delves deep into a grammar of intimacy. It strikes a deftly achieved balance between what is articulated and what is withheld in subtle lyric narratives that speak of family, love and loss.’ (Michael Marks)

’[offers] glimpses of a family stuttered by nations, borders, and language games’ (Oxford Poetry)

My poetry has also appeared in journals including The Poetry Review, Ambit, Wasafiri, Propel, and Butcher’s Dog. I have been Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes, twice longlisted in the National Poetry Competition and Mslexia Poetry Prize, and shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award.

 

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Public Engagement/Curatorial Projects

 
 

Forms, Voices, Networks: Feminism and the Media
An exhibition for the German Historical Research Institute, London

Can Robots Care?
An exhibition at Thackray Museum of Medicine.