BIO

Yael Massen was born on Long Island, New York and received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry at Indiana University, Bloomington, in May 2017. Yael served her graduate community as Nonfiction Editor and Associate Poetry Editor of Indiana Review, an MFA Representative, and on the Creative Writing Department's Hospitality Committee. She graduated with an undergraduate degree summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 2013 from The State University of New York College at Geneseo (SUNY Geneseo), double majoring in Psychology and English: Creative Writing.

 

As an Associate Instructor at Indiana University, Yael taught W103: Introduction to Creative Writing, W203: Introduction to Poetry, W280: Literary Editing and Publishing. Along with her W280 students, she helped to found Magic Jar Magazine, serving as Editor-in-Chief. As a lecturer of W131: Elementary Composition, in which she instructed a recipient of a 2016 Culbertson Essay Prize in Undergraduate Writing. She has also taught Business and Technical Writing 250: Principles of Business Communication and served as the Summer Assistant Director of the Program in Professional Writing at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Yael has also facilitated creative writing classes with first and second grade students at a local Bloomington, Indiana elementary school. She currently volunteers as an OSA (On-Scene Advocate) and a Legal Advocate at Bloomington's Middle Way House, one of six National Domestic Violence Model programs.