Crystal J. Zanders is a neurodivergent poet, educator, and activist from Tennessee. She received her master’s degree in secondary education from Mississippi State University in 2010 while she was teaching in underserved schools in the rural South. She left secondary education to focus her writing and earned an MFA in poetry from University of New Mexico in 2018. Her creative work has been featured in Mud Season Review, Rigorous, |tap|lit, and elsewhere.
At the Ecology Center, Crystal is a Writing Fellow. She is also a Rackham Merit Fellow, Oklahoma Center for the Humanities Fellow, and a doctoral candidate in the Joint Program in English and Education at the University of Michigan. Her research includes topics such as race, (dis)ability, intersectionality, digital pedagogy, language, and educational inequity. Her work has been published in College Composition and Communication, Pedagogy, and Assessing Writing. Currently, she is writing her dissertation, Unseen: Black Autistic Women's Masking Practices, Pressures, and Possibilities alongside her faithful furry family, Rex the Wonder-Pug and Tyrion Zannister, chug extraordinaire.