Arab American poet Maya Salameh balances books of every kind at UCLA

There's nothing solemn about the way Maya Salameh recounts the mythological story that inspired her latest book of poems.

"Mermaid Theory" draws from the myth of Atargatis, a Syrian goddess often associated with one of the earliest mermaid legends. As Salameh tells it, Atargatis jumps into the sea after the death of her mortal love.

"Her boyfriend dies, then the gods are like, 'No, queen, you're going to be a mermaid,'" Salameh said with a smile. "It's kind of a great story."

The line lands with the wit and ease that seem to follow her naturally.

By day, the San Diego native can be found studying case law, coordinating fundraising initiatives and helping lead student mentorship efforts supporting careers in public interest law. By night - often in the margins between packed obligations - she returns to poetry.

During National Poetry Month and Arab American Heritage Month, Salameh, who attends UCLA School of Law, is celebrating the April 7 release of "Mermaid Theory." The collection was published by Haymarket Books, an independent Chicago press that Salameh had long admired for its mission of supporting writers and books that focus on struggles for social and economic justice. She marked the release three days later at a Los Angeles launch event surrounded by fellow writers, readers and friends.

For her, the moment reflects years of writing, questioning and building a life around identity and language.

"I could never divorce my identity as a poet from my identity as a law student. Both poetry and the law are technologies of naming. Both decide who counts as a person, what harm is visible and what can be said aloud," she said. "My writing will always be interdisciplinary because it works to bridge theory, science and myth to consider what story we've been sold, and what story lives underneath its floorboards."

Salameh grew up in a family with roots in Syria and Lebanon, spending summers visiting relatives in both countries until the civil war in Syria brought those trips to a halt for several years. The loss of that connection deepened her awareness of family history, culture and belonging.

"I was born the year after 9/11 in San Diego, one of the largest military concentrations in the world. I was always being made aware of my Arabness. I grew up around soldiers and their children, and it made me curious about the ways American narratives of safety and national security shaped the ways my body was calculated as a threat in most of the rooms I entered."

Salameh has been writing since she was a child, experimenting with various forms, including short stories, journals and essays. She was able to travel to Lebanon again as a teenager. As she returned from the visit, she wrote what she considers her first real poem on the flight home. She recalls that being back in her homeland, surrounded by people who looked and spoke like her, "lit something urgent." She has been writing ever since.

At 16, Salameh was named a National Student Poet, America's highest honor for youth poets, an honor that brought her to the White House to read her work to first lady Michelle Obama. Throughout college, she continued publishing and later released her first collection, "How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave," which explores questions of surveillance, memory, and the digitization of Arab life and death.

In the years since, she has been honored with the Etel Adnan Prize, the Markowitz Award for Exceptional New Writers and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

With "Mermaid Theory," Salameh explores memory, mythology, migration and the natural world through the lens of the Mediterranean Sea, where she learned to swim as a child and which she now recognizes as the grave of thousands of displaced Arab peoples. Water, the Arab American diaspora, family memory and questions of belonging move throughout the book.

The collection also reflects Salameh's instincts for self-directed research and building her own curriculum.

"The most impactful books I've read have been those I read outside of classrooms. I love rabbit holes," she said. "I think all poets should have obsessions."

Salameh often writes primarily in English while writing in Arabic, Spanish and French - languages she speaks and studies. She is fascinated by how languages overlap, evolve and carry memories across generations.

"I like exploring the ways languages kind of kiss and intermingle. There is so much history in the shared etymologies between them. For instance, Spanish derives more than 4,000 words from Arabic," she said.

That same curiosity eventually led her to law school.

After earning undergraduate and graduate degrees at Stanford in psychology and sociology, respectively, Salameh considered several paths, including pursuing doctoral study in those fields. Over time, she found herself drawn to the law as a way to pair her interests in research, advocacy and a chance to most effectively "be of use."

She said UCLA stood out for its Critical Race Studies program and faculty such as Cheryl Harris and Joanna Schwartz.

"Whatever I study, I wanted it to be intersectional," she said. "I wanted it to be awake and alive to the realities of race and injustice."

Now in her second year, Salameh says law school increasingly feels aligned with the reasons she enrolled.

This spring, she is taking part in a civil rights litigation practicum and working on First Amendment litigation through a placement with the American Civil Liberties Union. In earlier pro bono clinics, she helped clients navigate public benefits applications and assisted individuals seeking to clear misdemeanor records that had become barriers to housing and employment. She says the work affirmed her desire to advocate for immigrants and system-impacted people whose voices are often overlooked.

This year, Salameh served as co-president of a revived student organization, the Public Interest Students' Organization, focused on public interest careers, mentoring classmates, and organizing panels with practicing attorneys working to serve the communities most neglected by the law, as well as supporting a community-based aid network for immigrant families in need, West LA Rapid Response. Outside of school, she has used her poetry workshop offerings and community organizing to raise over $36,000 for displaced Arab families.

"Leading PISO and being involved with my clinics has reminded me why I came to law school," she said. "A legal education is power. Just a few hours of your time as a law student can help change someone's life by opening their access to housing or food benefits. To me, being a public interest lawyer means showing up, poking at the doctrines which work to suffocate our communities, and daring to imagine something better."

Through it all, poetry remains the constant thread.

She writes late at night, between classes or whenever time allows. Though few classmates share that creative world, maintaining both identities has helped keep her grounded.

"It can be a little lonely sometimes to be ticking away on my Google doc," she said. "But it reminds me of what's important."

That balancing act is what makes Salameh's path distinctive; a student equally committed to legal arguments and lyrical ones, and to scholarship, storytelling and soul-searching.

At UCLA, she has found room for it all.