Photo by Sarah Hirschey ©
Marissa is an essayist and writer currently at work on a hybrid coming-of-age memoir about art and riding the New York City subway system—a künstlerroman called Tunnel Vision.
She’s an Associate Editor for nonfiction at Shenandoah, former Nonfiction Editor at The Adroit Journal, and has previously worked with esteemed literary magazines Oxford American and Ecotone. She also edits prose for The Rejoinder, a new magazine for serialized fiction.
Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in BRINK, Barrelhouse, Barren Magazine, PANK Daily, and Memoir Mixtapes, among others. She was awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center and attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop in 2023. She was a 2021 Humor Finalist for the Miller Audio Prize at the Missouri Review, and her audio essay was featured on the magazine’s podcast.
She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from UNC Wilmington, where she earned the honor of Distinction for her academic work, and BA in English from Wesleyan University. She lives in New York with her wife, the painter Lydia Baker.
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Marissa has been copywriting and editing for a decade. Clients include Fortune 15 companies, major non-profit organizations and cultural institutions, and a variety of creative agencies (see: Copy).