Chris Mayes-Cottrell grew up on Maui, living at one point in almost every town and winding up attending almost every school on the island. His childhood was a grim environment filled with near constant abuse or neglect, but he was able to find moments of joy while visiting tūtū Barbara’s house (the native Hawaiian matriarch of the large ‘ohana in which he was mostly raised), watching mo’olelo on PBS, or playing in the ocean. Recently diagnosed with autism, Chris is able to more deeply understand the nature of his relationship with poetry, community, and self.

In his mid-20’s, Mayes-Cottrell chose to attend Portland State University, becoming one of the first people awarded the MFA in poetry in their program. His fiction, reviews, and poems have appeared in The Scene, Willamette Week, Portland Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Oregon Literary Review, Nervy Girl!, Poor Claudia, Haggard & Halloo, Unshod Quills, The The Poetry and The Grove Review. Cottrell's Chapbooks Normal Park & Paradise and [luvthrong] are out of print.

In 2008, Mayes-Cottrell won 2nd Place in the WEGO Call for Papers, and was a finalist for the Tom and Phyllis Burnam Award and the Shelly Reece Award. Cottrell has since been awarded the 2009 and 2010 Shelley Reece Award and placed as a finalist for the 2009 Tom and Phyllis Burnam Award and the 2010 Academy of American Poets Award.

Chris became the editor of Portland Review in July 2008, running the magazine until June 2010. He also taught four years' worth of five-week intensive literature and writing courses for the unfortunately defunded Upward Bound program at Linfield College (where his suspicions that students between the ages of thirteen and seventeen are capable of writing college-level papers were regularly proven true). Cottrell has also been a Literary Arts Writers in the Schools intern and WITS Writer-in-Residence, positions which tapped deeply into his love for working with people to expand literary horizons and discover their own voices. He is currently an adjunct professor at Chemeketa Community College and Portland Community College with over a decade of college teaching experience.