Photo by Kimara Alan Dixon
Maurya Kerr is a Bay area-based choreographer, writer, filmmaker, and the artistic director of tinypistol. Much of her work, across disciplines, is focused on black and brown people reclaiming their birthright to both wonderment and the quotidian. Maurya was a member of Alonzo King LINES Ballet for twelve years, an ODC artist-in-residence from 2015 to 2018, and holds an MFA in dance from Hollins University.
After co-curating ODC Theater’s 2023/24 season, she was appointed as Resident Curator for their 2024/25 season. Maurya’s sophomore film, Saint Leroi, was described in the Village Voice as “a surreal meditation on Black history, violence, and American decay and a powerful indictment of racism.” Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart prize and appears in multiple journals. Recent honors include winning Rhino Poetry's 2024 Editor's Prize, second place in Palette Poetry's 2023 Resistance & Resilience Prize, and first place in the 2022 Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Her first chapbook, MUTTOLOGY, was published by Small Harbor Publishing in late 2023, and her second, tommy noun, in spring 2024 by C&R Press.