Maya Ribault

Maya Ribault is a French-American poet based in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and the Bennington Writing Seminars where she was a Jane Kenyon Scholarship recipient. In addition, she has found support and inspiration for her poetry through Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, New York State Summer Writers Institute, for which she was awarded a full-tuition scholarship, and a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts residency. In 2017, one of her poems was shortlisted for the Faulkner - Wisdom competition.  Her poetry including a translation, has appeared in Bloodroot, Cloudbank, North American Review, Speak, The New Yorker, and The Southampton Review Online and is forthcoming in Agni. Her chapbook, Hôtel de la Providence, was recently released by Finishing Line Press.  She is currently the writer in residence at St. Albans in Washington, DC.

Hôtel de la Providence

Hôtel de La Providence takes the pulse of childhood memories. There is a melancholic joy wrapping the poems, complicated by an energy of delight. For instance in “Alegría,” we are invited to crawl up “mud piles, down / steps, in sand, over pebbles, or stones, / soft and sharp” whereas “The Sailboat” steers us through waves of exile: we’re torn from the past, realistic about the present. This collection longs for a home, one the poet now inhabits only in her memory.

buy now!