Raquel Salas Rivera

Raquel Salas Rivera is the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. Their work has appeared in journals such as the The Journal of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña), Apogee, and McSweeney’s. 

From 2016-2018, they were co-editor of The Wanderer and co-editor of Puerto Rico en mi corazón, a collection of bilingual broadsides of contemporary Puerto Rican poets. This summer, they spent countless hours alongside Raena Shirali, Kirwyn Sutherland and Ashley Davis organizing a festival called We (Too) Are Philly, inspired by Langston Hughes’ poem, “I, Too.”

They are the first recipient of the Ambroggio Prize from the Academy of American Poets for their dual-language book x/ex/exis. They have authored six chapbooks as well as four full-length poetry books. Their latest book, lo terciario/the tertiary, confronts the PROMESA bill and was recently on the 2018 National Book Award Longlist. In 2019, Birds, LLC will publish their fifth book, while they sleep (under the bed is another country), which will include images created by the Puerto Rican artist Mariana Ramos Ortiz.