Maya Schenwar is a writer, editor, journalist and organizer who has spent the last 20 years working to sculpt new ways for journalism and storytelling to serve the public good and fuel social transformation.
Books and Writing
Maya is the co-editor of We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition (Haymarket Books, 2024), the co-author (with Victoria Law) of Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms (The New Press, July 2020), the co-editor of co-editor (with Joe Macaré and Alana Yu-Lan Price) of Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States (Haymarket Books, 2016), and the author of Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014). All of her books challenge the ingrained logic of prison and policing that holds our society captive, and share the work of bold and creative efforts to uproot the prison-industrial complex and systemic oppression. She also edited and wrote the foreword to Kelly Hayes’ and Mariame Kaba’s book, Let This Radicalize You; authored a chapter in The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working Toward Freedom; and co-authored a chapter in the anthology Welcome to the Revolution: Universalizing Resistance for Social Justice and Democracy in Perilous Times.
In addition to books, Maya has written op-eds and news articles for Truthout, The New York Times, The Guardian, NBC News THINK, The Nation, The New Jersey Star-Ledger, Ms. Magazine, Prison Legal News, Salon, Slate, and many other publications, mostly focusing on prisons, policing, surveillance, institutionalization, abolition, war, imperialism, drug policy, and media. She has also written articles on parenting for Motherwell and Scary Mommy, and fiction for the Baltimore Review.
Journalism and Media
Maya spent 13 years as Editor-in-Chief of Truthout, an independent social justice news publication, and is currently the organization’s Editor-at-Large and Board President. Two years ago, she founded the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism and serves as its director. Through the Center, Maya mentors small and emerging independent journalism organizations, facilitates collaborations, and leads a prize program to honor incarcerated and formerly incarcerated journalists.
Along with media workers from 15 different organizations, she co-founded the Movement Media Alliance, a coalition of grassroots media outlets working to collaboratively sustain and transform the field. Within that alliance, she also co-founded Media Against Apartheid and Displacement, a collaboration between 20 movement media organizations to uplift accurate coverage of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. Maya served for six years on the coordinating committee of the Media Consortium, and currently serves on the board of Waging Nonviolence.
Previous to her work at Truthout, Maya was Contributing Editor at the late Punk Planet magazine, writing about antiwar activism, Palestine solidarity, LGBTQ liberation, feminism, death penalty organizing, and more.
Awards and Recognition
Maya is the recipient of a Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Chi Award, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, the Women’s Prison Association’s Sarah Powell Huntington Leadership Award, Truthout’s Flame of Truth Award, and a Women to Celebrate Award, and her books have won awards including Independent Publisher Book Awards and a Society of Midland Authors honor. She was recognized as one of NewCity Chicago‘s “Lit 50” and a “Writer of the Moment” in 2021. An essay she wrote while in labor with her child was selected as a “notable essay” in The Best American Essays, 2019. Maya’s co-authored book, Prison by Any Other Name, was a finalist for the Bernstein Prize. Her body of work was recognized by congregation Tzedek Chicago through a 2021 event, “Joy in the Struggle: A Fundraiser for Tzedek Chicago Honoring Maya Schenwar.” Under Maya’s co-leadership, Truthout won a 2021 Izzy Award from the Park Center for Independent Media, and a 2022 Synapses Award from the Crossroads Fund. A video series she coproduced with Truthout, Zealous, and Teen Vogue won a 2024 Anthem Award.
Public Speaking
Maya has been a keynote speaker in a wide range of settings around the U.S. and internationally. She gave a Tedx talk on prison abolition, and has also led workshops on movement journalism, op-ed writing, and prison industrial complex abolition. Maya has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including The New Yorker Radio Hour (NPR), Democracy Now!, C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” MSNBC’s “The Shift,” Al Jazeera’s “The Stream,” The Thom Hartmann Show, Wisconsin Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, San Francisco Public Radio, The Majority Report, WBAI, KPFK, and many more. She was a featured interviewee in a PBS documentary about movement media, Under the Ground: The Story of Liberation News Service.
Community Organizing
Maya organizes with the Chicago-based collective Love & Protect (previously the Chicago Alliance to Free Marissa Alexander), which supports women, trans and nonbinary people of color who are criminalized or harmed by state and interpersonal violence. She was a co-founder of the Chicago Community Bond Fund (CCBF), which paid bond for people incarcerated in Cook County Jail and worked toward the abolition of money bond and pretrial incarceration. Additionally, she organizes with Jewish Fast for Gaza, a collective of Jewish organizers participating in a fast against genocide and for Palestinian liberation, with an understanding that collective liberation must include freedom from all cages, including occupation.
She is a member of the board of directors for Just Foreign Policy and the advisory board of the Children’s Best Interest Project, and is part of the editorial collective that produces the prison newsletter Stateville Speaks. Maya also serves as a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace advisory committee on the “Deadly Exchange” project, working to end the US/Israel police training exchange programs. During the height of the Iraq War, Maya served as media coordinator for Voices for Creative Nonviolence, and helped to organize actions against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Maya lives in Chicago with her partner and child. Her (unpaid) work as a parent inspires and drives much of her writing, speaking, and organizing, as she imagines a future grounded in principles of nurturing, care, mutual aid, support, love, and a deep recognition of the humanity of all people.
