Engage Winona welcomes Mai'a Williams!

We’re thrilled to introduce our new program and communications coordinator, Mai'a Williams!

Mai'a is a multimedia artist and changemaker who comes to us with an extensive background in communications, cultural work, grant writing, and program management. Mai’a started working with Engage Winona in 2020 as a facilitator for the Lived Experience Leaders program. They are a Rural Regenerator Fellow with Springboard for the Arts (2021-2023). They are the co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Frontlines (2016), which places marginalized mothers of color at the center of a world of life-affirming social transformation. Mai'a is also the author of the memoir, This is How We Survive: Revolutionary Mothering, War, and Exile in the 21st Century (2019), which chronicles their communal caretaking work in the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. It was living and working in these communities that inspired their life-affirming work.

Mai’a received a Minnesota State Arts Board (MSAB) Individual Artist grant in 2022, to finish their next book, Apocalypse Here – essays on rural organizing and indigeneity. In 2021, they received an Artists Respond: Equitable Rural Futures grant to publish their chapbook, The Future of Love – meditations about living in Winona during the pandemic and global uprisings for racial justice. They have lived in Winona since 2015 and are a writer, multimedia artist and cultural worker. They are excited to join Engage Winona and find innovative ways to strengthen communal ties.

Send a note to welcome Mai’a at maia@engagewinona.org!