Biography

Mariam Makatsaria was born in the heart of Tbilisi in 1992, and as a toddler, she was surrounded by a husband-and-wife duo (her grandparents) that went through countless reams of paper daily, penning poetry and prose and everything in between. So it’s no wonder that Mariam, along with her grandfather’s high-bridged nose and her grandmother’s golden-brown locks, inherited the writer gene.

At the age of three, Mariam moved to Egypt where her mother worked as an art professor at the Academy of Art in Cairo. Every other summer, she’d visit her hometown, indulge in some freshly baked Shotis Puri and Khatchapuri and head back to her life in the Middle East with a very heavy heart and very full stomach.

In 2011, Mariam decided to move to the United States to pursue a degree in journalism at Kent State University in Ohio as an honors student. In college, she was a senior editor for The Burr, Kent State’s special interest magazine, where she alternated between editing and writing, short-form and long-form, online and in print. She managed a small group of writers, cultivating their storytelling skills and enthusiasm. She also snagged her first job at Georgian Journal, a Georgian newspaper published in English. Under the direction of its editor Nugzar Rukhadze, she produced weekly content with insightful commentary on Georgian communities abroad, reporting on entertainment, living and health issues. She graduated Summa Cum Laude while earning membership into Kappa Tau Alpha, the National Honor Society in Journalism and Mass Communication, and Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest honor society for the liberal arts and sciences in the United States.

Soon after graduating, she moved to Little Rock for her first job out of college. Working as an assistant editor at Arkansas Life, Mariam wrote daily—both short, departmental pieces and long features. She planned, procured and edited stories, worked with other writers and created photoshoot concepts. During her time there, she copy edited The Modern Arkansas Table, a cookbook that features 40 new-Southern recipes from Arkansas based culinary innovators. In only a year, she was promoted to associate editor.

In December of 2017, she traded in Arkansas for a life in California. There, she works as a freelance journalist for several publications, writing profiles, front-of-the-book pieces and service packages.