Meredith Arena is a queer writer and educator from New York City, where she spent most of her life. She spent 13 years in Seattle/Duwamish Territory and now resides once more in Brooklyn. She is an interdisciplinary teaching artist, facilitator and activist. Her work can be found in various journals including Poetry NW, Moist Poetry Journal, The Shore, Longleaf Review, Entropy, Lunch Ticket and Peatsmoke. She holds an MFA in creative writing and a Certificate in the Teaching of Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles; a BA in cultural studies from Eugene Lang and a BFA in photography from Parson’s School of Design.

Meredith has been a teaching artist since 1999 when she began teaching photography and zine making for Elevated Urban Arts & Education, which was piloted at Robert F Wagner Institute of Arts and Technology in Queens. She worked in Bushwick Brooklyn with the Arts & Literacy Program from 2005-2011, first as a teaching artist in photography, then as site coordinator and education coordinator. As she met and learned from teaching artists in dance and theatre, her teaching practice expanded to include performance, which as a young person was central to her. She began writing more in 2008 and has since created several workshops that blend theatre, writing and movement.

In Seattle she founded and facilitated a satellite of New York’s Interdependence Project, a meditation group that met in the Central District from December 2011- December 2017. She leads poetry and other arts integrated classes for young people in both English and Spanish and creative workshops for adults and loves working with elders. She was a staff teaching artists at Arts Corps, Seattle for 5 years. and has taught and facilitated in many organizations in the Seattle area: Seattle Arts and Lectures’ Writers in the Schools Program, Highline College, Arts Corps, Book It Repertoire, Silverkite Community Arts, Creative Advantage, Path With Art and Hugo House’s Scribes writing camp.