Malia Márquez

Malia Márquez (she/her) is a writer with roots in the Southwest and New England. She holds a BFA in 3D Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her work in translation has appeared in Poetry magazine, and her short fiction and essays have been featured or are forthcoming in Literary Hub, The Georgia Review, and other journals and anthologies. She is the author of City of Smoke and Sea (Red Hen Press, 2025) and This Fierce Blood (Acre Books, 2021). Márquez lives in the greater Chicago area, where she is at work on her next novel.

Red Hen Press Women's Prose Prize, 2023; Fiction Finalist, Housatonic Book Awards, 2022; Silver Medal for Multicultural Fiction, Independent Publishers Book Awards (IPPY), 2022.

City of Smoke and Sea (Red Hen Press, 2025); This Fierce Blood (Acre Books, 2021).

I approach teaching as a collaborative, student-centered practice that thrives on curiosity, dialogue, and creative process. Drawing on feminist and Freirean pedagogical traditions, as well as my own formative experiences in inclusive, arts-based classrooms, I create learning environments where students feel both supported and challenged. I encourage them to explore the interplay between craft and experimentation, to deconstruct dominant narrative forms, and to draw from their personal and cultural histories as sources of artistic insight. In my courses, diverse literary traditions and media serve as starting points for inquiry, allowing students to expand their range, test new possibilities, and develop their voices within a community of engaged, critical thinkers.