Raquel Salas Rivera

Raquel Salas Rivera (Mayagüez, 1985) is a Puerto Rican poet, translator, and editor. In 2017, he coedited a series of bilingual broadsides of contemporary Puerto Rican poets, which were later collected in the Puerto Rico en mi corazón anthology (Anomalous Press, 2019). In 2018, he was named the Poet Laureate of Philadelphia for a two-year term. The following year he became the inaugural recipient of the Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets and won the New Voices Award from Puerto Rico’s Festival de la Palabra. He is the author of seven chapbooks and five full-length poetry books. His first two books, Caneca de anhelos turbios (Editora Educación Emergente, 2011) and tierra intermitente/intermittent land (Ediciones Alayubia, 2017), were published in Puerto Rico. His third book, lo terciario/the tertiary (2nd ed., Noemi Press, 2019), was on the 2018 National Book Award Longlist and won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. His fourth book, while they sleep (under the bed is another country), was published by Birds, LLC in 2019 and was on the 2020 Pen America Open Book Award Longlist. His fifth book, x/ex/exis: poemas para la nación/ poems for the nation, was the first recipient of the Ambroggio Prize (Editorial Bilingüe/ Bilingual Press, 2020). His most recent book, antes que isla es volcán/ before island is volcano, is an imaginative leap into Puerto Rico’s decolonial future and is forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2022. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania and now lives, writes, and teaches in Puerto Rico.