Raquel Salas Rivera

Born: 1985

Roque Salas Rivera (he/they) is a poet, translator, and editor from Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. In 2018, he was named poet laureate of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Rivera is the author of several collections of poetry, including x/ex/exis (University of Arizona Press, 2021), which won the 2018 Ambroggio Prize and lo terciario / the tertiary (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2018, and Noemi Press, 2019), which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award and won a 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. Rivera is the coeditor of La piel del arrecife: Antología de poesía trans puertorriqueña (approximately translated “The Skin of the Reef: An Anthology of Puerto Rican Trans Poetry”) (La Impresora & Atarraya Cartonera, 2023), and Puerto Rico en mi corazón (Anomalous Press, 2019), a collection of contemporary Puerto Rican poets. Rivera earned a PhD in comparative literature and literary theory from the University of Pennsylvania, and he lives, teaches, and writes in Puerto Rico. With a three-year grant from the Mellon Foundation, they worked as investigator and head of the translation team for El proyecto de la literatura puertorriqueña/The Puerto Rican Literature Project (PLPR), a free, bilingual, user-friendly and open access digital portal that anyone can use to learn about and teach Puerto Rican poetry. Source