About

Maisha Z. Johnson is an award-winning writer, editor, and digital strategist who writes and works where the arts meet social change and digital media.

Her work experience includes some powerhouse influencers in efforts to make our world a better place, including Upworthy, the viral social change platform, Everyday Feminism, the largest independent feminism media site in the world, and CUAV, the nation’s oldest LGBTQ anti-violence organization.

Maisha’s passion for amplifying marginalized voices and creating community-based resources combines with her knack for presenting complex topics in accessible ways.

The results? Viral articles shared over 900,000 times, social media strategies that have reached millions of users, and a fundraising campaign that raised over $50,000 in just one month. At Everyday Feminism, Maisha has written several of the publication’s most widely read content on topics including racism, intimate partner violence, queer liberation, and intersectional feminism.

Her work has been featured on and cited by the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence, BBC, Teen Vogue, Salon, Bustle, The Katie Speak Show, ATTN, and more, and she’s become one of the web’s leading experts on cultural appropriation. She can also be found shamelessly indulging in her obsession with pop culture around the web, often providing critical analyses on what we can learn about ourselves and our world from the moments that capture our attention.

These examples show the transformative impact of drawing on the power of digital media for social change and healing. With this commitment at the center of her work, Maisha has also helped facilitate other writers’ voices as an editor for Everyday Feminism and Black Girl Dangerous, as a creative facilitator leading arts and healing workshops with survivors of violence, and as the author of Through Your Own Words: 51 Writing Prompts for Healing and Self-Care.

In addition to her digital media work and activism, Maisha is a creative writer who studied her craft at San Francisco State University, and went on to earn an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals, nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and won competitions including Literary Death Match, The Lit Slam, and Portuguese Artist Colony. Maisha is author of a full-length poetry collection, No Parachutes to Carry Me Home (from Punk Hostage Press), as well as three poetry chapbooks.

To keep up with what’s next for Maisha, or at least to see her favorite gifs, follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.