Marina Weiss is from Massachusetts, and lives in Brooklyn. She is a clinical psychologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Innovation in Mental Health at the Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy at the City University of New York, where she leads training and implementation on three projects aiming to decrease mental health disparities in New York. Marina is a graduate of Amherst College and New York University's Master of Fine Arts in Poetry, and holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from Adelphi University. She has clinical and research experience working with trauma- exposed and acculturating New Yorkers in both inpatient and high risk outpatient community settings, and clinically, specializes in integrative, personalized treatment for recovery from trauma. Marina’s research interests include describing and addressing mental health disparities in trauma-exposed populations, implementation of trauma-informed, culturally responsive community mental health interventions through community-based, participatory research (CBPR) methods, and the impact of intersectionality and acculturative stress to reduce mental health disparities.
Marina has previously conducted research on the impact of traumatic stress and adverse experiences on mental health and interventions to address traumatic stress for the Yale School of Public Health, the New York University McSilver Institute of Poverty Policy, Practice, and Research, the Perinatal Pathways Lab at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, the TREAT Lab at the City College of New York, and the SCOnE Lab at Adelphi University, as well as coordinating and evaluating the inaugural pilot of mental health integration into free services for survivors of intimate partner violence in New York City as part of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center’s Women’s Program in the Department of Psychiatry from 2014-2017. She has received grants and prizes from the Fulbright Commission, the Academy of American Poets, the Starlight Foundation, the New York University MFA in Creative Writing, Amherst College, The Garden Clubs of America, and Narrative Magazine's 30 Under 30 contest.
Marina is also a poet and translator. Her chapbook, Misprison, was selected for the 2017 Girls Like Us Prize by Aracelis Girmay, and was published by Rabbit Catastrophe Press (Lexington, Kentucky) in 2018. The title poem, Misprison, was selected by Eileen Myles as the winner of the 2018 So to Speak Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, Relativity, was a finalist for Phantom Limb Press's Nathan Breitling Prize and for The Atlas Review Chapbook contest in 2015. Her work is published or forthcoming in Tin House; Colorado Review; Gulf Coast; Narrative; Bat City Review; Fjords; No, Dear; Canteen; Parallax; Paper Darts; The Greensboro Review; Phantom Limb; Thrush; Caper; Clapboard House; folly; Brink; 34th Parallel; Painted Bride Quarterly; The Montreal Review; dislocate; and elsewhere. Her reviews and interviews have been published in Weird Sister, Boston Review, KGB Bar Lit Journal, and Explosion-Proof, where she was poetry editor.
Marina is currently working on designing a creative writing intervention to support mental health.