Dr. Maya Tevet Dayan is an Israeli-Canadian poet, writer, scholar, and public intellectual whose work explores home, displacement, motherhood, grief, feminism, Jewish identity, and the search for belonging. Moving fluidly between poetry, memoir, fiction, and cultural criticism, she is recognized as one of the leading contemporary voices in Israeli literature.

She is the author of one novel, four poetry collections, a memoir-in-essays on feminism, and a volume of translated poetry. Her poetry collection Wherever We Float, That's Home, translated from Hebrew by Jane Medved, received the Melinda A. Markham Award for Poetry in Translation and was published in the United States by Saturnalia Books. Her most recent Hebrew collection, The Wandering Jewess (2025), a poetic journal written during the years of war, was awarded the Israeli President's Wife Prize for Hebrew Poetry.

Her novel One Thousand Years to Wait became a national bestseller, while her memoir-in-essays Feminism as I Taught it to My Daughters established her as an influential feminist voice beyond the literary world. Across genres, her writing combines lyrical intimacy with philosophical reflection, drawing on personal experience to examine broader questions of identity, memory, ethics, and cultural belonging.

For her contribution to Israeli literature, Tevet Dayan received the Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol Prize for Literature.

Her poetry has appeared in leading Israeli newspapers and literary journals and has been translated into English and German. Internationally, her work has been published in World Poetry Today, Rattle, Cagibi, Modern Poetry in Translation, Literary Review of Canada, and Asymptote. Her poems have inspired musical compositions, theatrical performances, visual art exhibitions, and interdisciplinary collaborations. In 2023, twenty-five artists participated in the exhibition Wherever We Float, That's Home, creating original works in dialogue with her poetry.

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 profoundly shaped both her life and her writing, informing a body of work that continually returns to the meaning of home and the possibility of finding it in unexpected places.

She holds a Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University, where she completed her doctoral research as a recipient of the University's President's and Rector's Fellowship under the supervision of Israel Prize laureate Professor David Shulman and Professor Shlomo Biderman. Her dissertation included an English translation of the Sanskrit epic Naishadhiya-Caritam together with an interdisciplinary study of its literary and artistic traditions. Her scholarly work has been published in Israel, the United States, and India.

Tevet Dayan has taught philosophy and Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa, and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Her teaching focused on Sanskrit literature, Hindu philosophy, gender in Hindu traditions, and the relationship between religion, literature, and visual culture. She has received multiple awards for excellence in teaching.

Since October 7, 2023, much of her public work has focused on strengthening relationships among Jewish communities in Israel and around the world. She lectures internationally, participates in cross-denominational Jewish learning initiatives, serves as a Senior Fellow at the Shazar Center, and founded a nationwide writing community that provides free participation for families affected by the war.

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