Chrissy Kolaya is a poet and fiction writer, author of Charmed Particles: a novel and two books of poems: Any Anxious Body and Other Possible Lives. Her work has been included in anthologies by Norton, Milkweed Editions, and in a number of literary journals.

Kolaya is passionate about collaboration and has worked with filmmakers and composers on adaptations of her work. Her work has been supported by grants, fellowships, and awards from the Fiction Meets Science Program at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany, the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Loft Literary Center, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Lake Region Arts Council, and the University of Minnesota. In 2021 she was one of three finalists for the position of Orlando Poet Laureate.

She teaches in the creative writing MFA program at the University of Central Florida, where she was awarded a 2022 Reach for the Stars Award, one of the university’s highest faculty honors.