Maceo Montoya is a California-based author and artist who has published books in a variety of genres, including four works of fiction: The Scoundrel and the Optimist, The Deportation of Wopper Barraza, You Must Fight Them: A Novella and Stories, and Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces. Other works include Letters to the Poet from His Brother, a hybrid memoir combining images, prose poems, and essays, and Chicano Movement for Beginners, a work of graphic nonfiction. His most recent book, coauthored with Javier O. Huerta, is Imaginative Possibilities: Conversations with Twenty-First-Century Latinx Authors, which won a 2025 American Book Award.

In the visual arts, Montoya’s paintings, drawings, and prints have been featured in exhibitions and publications throughout the country as well as internationally. He has collaborated with other writers on visual-textual projects, including David Montejano's Sancho's Journal, an ethnography of the Brown Berets in San Antonio, Laurie Ann Guerrero's A Crown for Gumecindo, Arturo Mantecon's translation of Mexican poet Mario Santiago Papasquiaro's Poetry Comes Out of My Mouth, and American Quasar, a collaboration with Fresno poet David Campos featuring nineteen of Montoya’s monoprints.

Montoya grew up in Elmira, California. He comes from a family of artists, including his father Malaquias Montoya, a renowned artist, activist, and educator, and his late brother, the poet Andrés Montoya. Maceo graduated from Yale University in 2002 and received his Master of Fine Arts in visual art from Columbia University in 2006. He is a professor at UC Davis in Chicana/o Studies, where he teaches courses on Chicanx culture and literature, and the English department's MFA Creative Writing Program. Since 2022, he has served as the editor of the literary magazine Huizache.