about A Place in My Dreams

This is a quiet place for poems, short prose, fragments, and whatever else survives the week. New work appears once a week.

Max Weirzba is a Ukrainian-Native American author based between Brooklyn & London whose work explores depression, childhood trauma, unrequited love, and the brutal extremes of bipolar disorder.

He draws inspiration from his own life experiences, the natural and unnatural world around him, and the spirits of his ancestors and future kin.

Max earned his doctorate in Mathematics and MA in English Literature from Caltech and the University of Arizona, respectively. His work focused on Philosophy of Mathematics and Rhetorical Theory; his research addressed the question of how a person chooses to model their world.

Max’s childhood writing is preserved in the U.S. Library of Congress through the national Letters About Literature competition. His work received national recognition in 2007 and 2010 and was selected as the State of Ohio winner in 2006 and 2008. Across these submissions, he wrote about abuse, war, isolation, guilt, and the possibility of reconciliation with the past—subjects that continue to shape his work today. His writing has also appeared in The Daily Wildcat, where he reflected on Native identity and the experience of existing between cultures as a person of mixed heritage.

Follow along for life stories shaped by struggle, longing, beauty, death, and survival. The hope is that somewhere within someone else’s pain, you find something beautiful for yourself, or at the very least, the reminder that you are not alone and that the spark of joy exists in all things.