{"id":1379,"date":"2017-06-14T13:24:42","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T17:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/?p=1379"},"modified":"2025-07-26T17:18:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T21:18:16","slug":"qa-with-maya-alexandri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/qa-with-maya-alexandri\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A With Maya Alexandri"},"content":{"rendered":"

Briefly describe your career (what you do, where you do it, why you do it).<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am a novelist, short story writer, and medical student. Both dimensions of my career are vocations for me.<\/p>\n

What has been your biggest professional accomplishment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a fiction writer, my career highlights include: publishing my novel, The Celebration Husband, in 2015; co-organizing a community multi-disciplinary arts series called Amplified Cactus between 2016-2017; writing and publishing a series of six linked short stories, collectively called The Plague Cycle (2016-2017), about an epidemic quarantine camp in South Sudan during an Ebola virus outbreak; and writing my novel, The Pomegranate Comedy, which I completed in 2017. As a medical student, the big accomplishment has been getting accepted to medical school.<\/p>\n

What has been your biggest personal accomplishment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Being compassionate with myself has been my biggest personal accomplishment.<\/p>\n

How did Goucher prepare you for your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I attended the post-baccalaureate pre-medical program at Goucher, which prepared me for medical school. I also attended Professor Madison Smartt Bell’s creative writing seminar, which was instrumental in spurring the productivity I have enjoyed as a writer in the past eighteen months.<\/p>\n

What is your most vivid Goucher memory?<\/strong><\/p>\n

With three wonderful Goucher undergraduate students who played musical instruments, I sang, “Boy in the Bubble,” for my post-baccalaureate class at our graduation ceremony; the performance was tremendous fun!<\/p>\n

How do you stay connected to the college?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I volunteer as an EMT at the Pikesville Volunteer Fire Company. I have been attempting to work with the Goucher administration to facilitate recruitment of Goucher students to volunteer in the community; it’s a slow process. I also mentor Goucher students and alum and participate in an online SKYPE creative writing workshop for Goucher students and alum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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