Marissa Davis is a writer, translator, editor, and educator from Paducah, Kentucky. Following years in Nashville, Tennessee and Paris, France, she now resides in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA in poetry from New York University, where she was a Rona Jaffe fellow.

Marissa is the author of My Name & Other Languages I Am Learning How to Speak (Jai-Alai Books, 2020), which received Cave Canem’s 2019 Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize, chosen by poet Danez Smith.

Her work can be found in Poetry, Poem-A-Day, Narrative, Rattle, West Branch, Mississippi Review, Muzzle Magazine, Frontier Poetry, and Best New Poets, among other journals. Her translations are published or forthcoming in Northwest Review, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, Mid-American Review, The Common, Rhino, American Chordata, and The Offing. Her writing has received the honors of: runner-up of Narrative Magazine’s 30 Below Contest, winner of Mississippi Review’s poetry contest, an Indiana Review contest finalist, a Black Warrior Review contest finalist, a Tin House scholarship, and a Stegner Fellowship (though for personal reasons, she did not attend the program), among others. In 2021, she was selected to judge that year’s PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

Professionally, Marissa is an editor, both freelance (of university applications and creative writing) and salaried (as an assistant at Penguin Random House). She has previously worked as a freelance translator, an ESL teacher, and an adjunct professor of creative writing.