About Andrés Cerpa
Andrés Cerpa is the author of Bicycle in a Ransacked City: An Elegy (2019), and The Vault (2021) from Alice James Books. He holds degrees from the University of Delaware and Rutgers University – Newark, and his writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, The BreakBeat Poets Vol 4: LatiNext, West Branch + elsewhere. He was raised in Staten Island, NY and lived many of his childhood summers in Puerto Rico.
About Ricardo Maldonado
Ricardo Alberto Maldonado was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He is the author of The Life Assingment, the co-editor of Puerto Rico en mi corazón, the translator of Dinapiera Di Donato’s Collateral / Colaterales and the recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo, the New York Foundation for the Arts and Queer|Arts|Mentorship. He lives in New York, where he serves as managing director at 92Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center.
About Raquel Salas Rivera
Raquel Salas Rivera (Mayagüez, 1985) is a Puerto Rican poet, translator, and editor. His honors include being named the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia and receiving the New Voices Award from Puerto Rico’s Festival de la Palabra. He is the author of five full-length poetry books. His third book, lo terciario/ the tertiary won the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry and was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award. His fourth book, while they sleep (under the bed is another country), was longlisted for the 2020 Pen America Open Book Award and was a finalist for CLMP’s 2020 Firecracker Award. His fifth book, x/ex/exis won the inaugural Ambroggio Prize. antes que isla es volcán/before island is volcano, his sixth book, is an imaginative leap into Puerto Rico’s decolonial future and is forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2022. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania and now writes and teaches in Puerto Rico.
About Alejandra Rosa
Alejandra Rosa (she/hers/they/them). Journalist, theater-artist and poet based in Puerto Rico. Nieta of doña Sarah, and the daughter of a baker. Her storytelling centers Black and queer experiences on an island that has survived two colonizations, Hurricane Maria, earthquakes, and currently a global pandemic. Rosa’s Afro-Caribbean imaginary exists despite a constant negotiation between trauma, loss and mourning. Her most recent work gifts words to unremembered corners of her memories of growing up Black and queer in Carolina. She is the author of “Grietas” (Ediciones Flamboyán, 2018) and “Compendio de lutos,” (En Rojo, Claridad). A Gabriel Garcia Marquez Fellow (2019, 2020) and New York National Puerto Rican Day Parade Scholar (2017), her stories and articles have been published in Africa, the U.S. and across the Caribbean in publications that include The New York Times, ViceVersa Magazine & 80grados.
