Bio


Maxe Crandall is Associate Director of the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stanford University. Maxe works at the intersections of transgender studies and experimental poetics and performance. His performance novel about AIDS archives and intergenerational memory The Nancy Reagan Collection (Futurepoem) was on the New York Public Library’s Best 10 Poetry Books of 2020, LitHub’s 65 Favorite Books of 2020, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry.

He is a poet, playwright, and director; author of the chapbooks Emoji for Cher Heart (belladonna*, 2015) and Together Men Make Paradigms (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs, 2014); founder of the theater company Beautiful Moments in Popular Culture; and producer/curator of the 2024 San Francisco Poets Theater Festival. He has presented plays at venues including Dixon Place, Joe Goode Annex, The Leather Archives & Museum, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. His work is anthologized in We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat 2020), The Brooklyn Poets Anthology (Brooklyn Arts Press 2017), and Troubling the Line (Nightboat Books 2013). Maxe has received fellowships from MacDowell, the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Poetry Project, Poets House, SFMOMA Open Space, and a Eureka Commission from Onassis USA.

Honors & Awards


  • Fellowship, MacDowell (2023)
  • Eureka Commission, Onassis USA (2020)
  • Playwriting Fellowship, Lambda Literary Foundation (2017)
  • Emerge-Surface-Be Fellowship, The Poetry Project (2014)
  • Emerging Poets Fellowship, Poets House (2014)

Education & Certifications


  • PhD, University of Michigan, English Language and Literature / Women's and Gender Studies
  • MA, University of Michigan
  • BA, Indiana University

2023-24 Courses


All Publications


  • PolySensorium Tells Your Fortune An Action Art Object TSQ-TRANSGENDER STUDIES QUARTERLY Carter, J., George, D., Crandall, M., Schwartz, S., Ozma, Z. 2018; 5 (1): 143–47
  • Moving Transgender Histories: Sean Dorsey's Trans Archival Practice TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly Schwartz, S. W., Crandall, M. 2015; 2 (4)

    View details for DOI 10.1215/23289252-3151493