Raquel Salas Rivera Reading 
Feb. 17, 2022
Virtual Reading
11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
Raquel Salas Rivera 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: poemas para la nación/ poems for the nation, 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. Thanks to a 2021 National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, he is translating the poetry of his grandfather, Sotero Rivera Avilés. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania and writes and teaches in Puerto Rico. Alongside the Colectivo and the University of Houston's USLDH team, and with a three-year grant from the Mellon Foundation, he serves as investigator and head translator for El proyecto de la literatura puertorriqueña/ The Puerto Rican Literature Project, a free, bilingual, user-friendly and open access digital portal that users within and outside academia can use to learn about and teach Puerto Rican poetry. Sponsored by the Cultural Enrichment Center, the Department of English and the Center for Latino Studies
