May Teng is an Indonesian-American writer and brand strategist based in New York.
As a brand strategist, May has built her career defining brands across the globe, from California cabernets to Korean smartphones. She’s currently crafting verbal identity on the creative team
at R/GA.
As an essayist, May’s fixations include fragmented narratives, portraits of place, boundaries and borders, and collective memory. Her writing is featured in AGNI, Literary Hub, and CRAFT, where her essay was selected by Roxane Gay for the 2025 Essay Prize, and has earned support from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Civil Society Institute, Periplus, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. May attended the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction MFA program, where she taught creative writing and learned to use the word “lacuna” in a sentence.
As a brand strategist, May has built her career defining brands across the globe, from California cabernets to Korean smartphones. She’s currently crafting verbal identity on the creative team
at R/GA.
As an essayist, May’s fixations include fragmented narratives, portraits of place, boundaries and borders, and collective memory. Her writing is featured in AGNI, Literary Hub, and CRAFT, where her essay was selected by Roxane Gay for the 2025 Essay Prize, and has earned support from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Civil Society Institute, Periplus, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. May attended the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction MFA program, where she taught creative writing and learned to use the word “lacuna” in a sentence.