About

Dr. Maya Tevet Dayan is an Israeli-Canadian poet, writer, essayist, scholar, and public intellectual, and one of today’s prominent voices in Israeli literature and feminist thought. Her most recent poetry collection, The Wandering Jewess (2025), a poetic journal written during the years of war, received the 2026 First Lady of the State of Israel Prize for Hebrew Poetry. . She is also a recipient of the Prime Minister Levi Eshkol Prize for Literature (2018).

Tevet Dayan is the author of a novel, four poetry collections, a memoir-in-essays on feminism, and a volume of poetry in English translation, and has translated the poetry of Dorianne Laux into Hebrew. Wherever We Float, That’s Home, translated by Jane Medved, received the Melinda A. Markham Award for Poetry in Translation and was published in the United States by Saturnalia Books. Her novel, One Thousand Years to Wait, became a national bestseller, while Feminism as I Taught It to My Daughters established her as an influential feminist voice beyond the literary world.

Across genres, her writing explores home, displacement, motherhood, grief, feminism, Jewish identity, and belonging, combining lyrical intimacy with philosophical reflection. Her poetry has appeared in leading Israeli publications and internationally in Rattle, Cagibi, Modern Poetry in Translation, Literary Review of Canada, Asymptote, and other journals. Her poems have also inspired music, theater, visual art, and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Born in Tel Aviv and raised in Hod Hasharon, Tevet Dayan has lived in nearly thirty homes across four continents. Experiences of migration, impermanence, and rebuilding have shaped a body of work that continually returns to the meaning of home and the possibility of finding it in unexpected places.

Tevet Dayan holds a Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University, where she was a President’s and Rector’s Fellow and studied under Israel Prize laureate Professor David Shulman and Professor Shlomo Biderman. Her doctoral work combined Sanskrit literature, translation, philosophy, and visual culture. She later taught philosophy and Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa, and the University of British Columbia, and received multiple awards for excellence in teaching.

Since October 7, 2023, much of Tevet Dayan’s public work has focused on Jewish identity, belonging, antisemitism, and the relationship between Israel and Jewish communities around the world. She lectures internationally to Jewish and non-Jewish audiences, participates in cross-denominational Jewish learning initiatives, and serves as a Fellow at the Shazar Center.

Alongside her literary and public work, Tevet Dayan has built one of Israel’s large independent writing communities, teaching thousands of participants each year. Her weekly column, "6 Minutes on Friday" is read by tens of thousands of readers in Hebrew and English.

Tevet Dayan lives between Israel and Canada with her husband and their three daughters.