Visiting Writers Public Reading: Rosa Alcala

Thursday, November 7, 2019 7:30 PM EST
Fenwick Library, 2001

Born in Paterson, NJ, to Spanish immigrants, Rosa Alcalá is a poet and translator currently living in El Paso, TX. She is the author of three books of poetry: Undocumentaries (Shearsman Books, 2010), The Lust of Unsentimental Waters (Shearsman Books, 2011), and MyOTHER TONGUE (Futurepoem, 2017). Her poems have appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them by Stephanie Burt (Harvard UP, 2016); The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time, edited by Charles Altieri and Nicholas D. Nace  (Northwestern UP, 2017); and American Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement, edited by Claudia Rankine and Michael Dowdy (Wesleyan UP, 2018). Her work as a translator has focused on contemporary Latin American women poets living in the U.S. Recent publications include two edited volumes: Spit Temple: The Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuña (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), and Cecilia Vicuña: New & Selected Poems (Kelsey Street Press, 2018).  She was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, and a finalist for a PEN Translation Award. She teaches in the Bilingual MFA in Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas at El Paso.