Off-Shore: Poets of the Caribbean Diaspora

Off-Shore: Poets of the Caribbean Diaspora
Friday, Sept 10th / 7 PM EDT

Join us for a public reading to celebrate the completion of Off-Shore, an online exchange of poets from the Caribbean with Miami poets from the Caribbean diaspora.

Hosted by Frank Báez and Lupita Eyde-Tucker

Participating Poets

Alejandro Álvarez Nieves (San Juan, 1976). Poet, storyteller and translator from English. He is a professor in the Graduate Program in Translation at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras. He has published El proceso traductor (AC Books, 2012), which was awarded with the El Nuevo Día Poetry Prize; Quiebre de armas (Trabalis Editores, 2018); and the collection of short stories Comandos (2019, Ediciones Alayubia). His unpublished novel La noche en el Majestic won an honorable mention at the National Awards of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture in 2015, and is expected to be published in 2021. Among his translations, highlights Wild Beauty and Other Poems by Ntozake Shange (Atria Books , 2018; into Spanish), with which he received the International Latino Book Award 2018 in the Spanish translation category. He is one of the organizers of El Festival de la Palabra in Puerto Rico.

Cristina Bendek (San Andrés, 1987) studied Government and International Relations. She resided between Bogotá and Mexico City, until she returned to San Andrés to dedicate herself to journalism. She was a columnist for a local media outlet for two years. Her first novel, Los cristales de la sal (2019), won the Elisa Mújica Prize for a novel written by women from IDARTES and Laguna Libros.

Oscar Cruz (Cuba, 1979). Poet and publisher. Bachelor in History. For his poetic work he has earned awards such as David 2006, Pinos Nuevos 2009, La Gaceta de Cuba 2010 and Wolsan-CubaPoesía 2012. He has published Los malos inquilinos (Ediciones Unión, 2008), Las posesiones (Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2010), La Maestranza (Ediciones Unión, 2013). He translated Le Petit, by Georges Bataille (Ediciones Santiago, 2011). He is also co-editor of the literary magazine La Noria.

Alejandro González Luna (Santo Domingo, 1983) has received the Emilio Prados Award and other literary prizes, such as the Young Poetry Award (2004) and the International Poetry Award (2008) from the Santo Domingo Book Fair. Author of the collection of poems Esta ciudad ha sido tomada por las piedras and La ventana donde me asomo. He has been a reporter for the newspaper El Caribe and also the editor of the newspaper’s literary magazine in the Dominican capital. He has collaborated with media outlets such as Radio France International, the Chinese state agency Xinua, and Forbes magazine, among others. He currently resides in Spain, doing a PhD in literary journalism at the University of Salamanca. He also co-produces the Ping Pong podcast.

Cindy Jiménez-Vera (Puerto Rico, 1978) is the author of several books. Among the most recent are No Lugar (2017), Iceland (2015), the book of chronicles En San Sebastián, su pueblo y el mío (2014), and the children's book, The great cheeseburger and other poems with teeth (2015). She is a librarian and Creative Director of Ediciones Aguadulce.

Fabienne Josaphat is the author of Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow, a debut novel released with Unnamed Press and translated into French by Calmann-Levy. Her essay, Summer is an Empty House, recently made the Notable Essays mentions in Best American Essays 2016. Her fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been featured in the African American Review, The Master’s Review, Grist Journal, Damselfly, Hinchas de Poesia, Off the Coast Journal and The Caribbean Writer, as well as in Eight Miami Poets, a Jai-Alai Books poetry anthology. She was recently a national juror for the 2019 Scholastic Awards. She lives in South Florida.

Mia Leonin is the author of four poetry collections: Fable of the Pack-Saddle Child (BkMk Press), Braid, Unraveling the Bed, and Chance Born (Anhinga Press), and a memoir, Havana and Other Missing Fathers (University of Arizona Press). Leonin has been awarded fellowships from the State of Florida Department of Cultural Affairs for her poetry and creative nonfiction, two Money for Women grants by the Barbara Deming Fund, and she has been a fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts/Annenberg Institute on Theater and Musical Theater. Leonin has published poetry and creative nonfiction in New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Guernica, Indiana Review, Witness, North American Review, River Styx, Chelsea, and others. She has written extensively about Spanish-language theater and culture for the Miami Herald, New Times, ArtburstMiami.com, and other publications. Leonin’s poetry has been translated to Spanish and she has been invited to read at the Miami International Book Fair, Poesia en el Laurel in Granada, Spain, and in Barcelona, Spain. Leonin teaches creative writing at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.

Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the author of TORTILLERA, the winner of the TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Prize published by Texas Review Press in 2021. She is also the author of the chapbook Visionware, published by Finishing Line Press as part of its New Women's Voices Series.She is also a Contributing Editor for Grabbed: Poets and Writers Respond to Sexual Assault, Empowerment and Healing (Beacon Press, 2020) and an Associate Editor for SWWIM Every Day, an online daily poetry journal for women identifying poets. Moro-Gronlier is the recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant and a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in poetry. Her work has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, The Best of the Net and a Lambda Literary Award. She is a career educator who has been honored as the recipient of an Educational Leader Award from Unity Coalition for her work with LGBTQ youth and as a Francisco R. Walker Teacher of The Year Nominee for Miami Dade County Public Schools. She resides in Miami, FL with her family.

Yaddyra Peralta is a Honduran-American poet, essayist, and editor whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Sink Review, Jai Alai, The Florida Review, Miami Rail, Eight Miami Poets (Jai Alai Books, 2015), The Breakbeat Poets, Vol. 4: LatiNext (Haymarket Books) and Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uproodteness (University of Florida Press). She lives in Miami Florida.

Geoffrey Philp is the author of five books of poetry, two novels, two collections of short stories, and three children's books. His poems and short stories have been published in The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse, sx salon, World Literature Today, The Johannesburg Review of Books, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, Bearden's Odyssey Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden, Rattle: Poets Respond, and Crab Orchard Review. A recipient of the Luminary Award from the Consulate of Jamaica (2015) and a former chair for the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, Philp's work is featured on The Poetry Rail at The Betsy--an homage to 12 writers that shaped Miami culture. He is currently working on a graphic novel for children, My Name is Marcus.

Legna Rodríguez Iglesias (Camagüey, 1984) is a prize-winning Cuban poet, fiction writer, and playwright. She has published widely, including the poetry books Mi pareja calva y yo vamos a tener un hijo (Ediciones Liliputienses, 2019), Miami Century Fox (Akashic Books, 2017), and Transtucé (Editorial Casa Vacía, 2017); the short story collections La mujer que compró el mundo (Editorial Los Libros de La Mujer Rota, 2017) and No sabe/no contesta (Ediciones La Palma, 2015); and the novels Mi novia preferida fue un bulldog francés, (Editorial Alfaguara, 2017), Mayonesa bien brillante (Hypermedia Ediciones, 2015), and Las analfabetas (Editorial Bokeh, 2015). Among her literary awards are the Centrigugados Prize for Younger Poets (Spain 2019), the Paz Prize (the National Poetry Series, 2017), the Casa de las Américas Prize in Theater (Cuba, 2016), and the Julio Cortázar Ibero-American Short Story Prize (2011). Spinning Mill, a chapbook of her work, has recently appeared in English translation with CardBoard House Press (2019, trans. Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann). The translation of her novel My Favorite Girlfriend Was a French Bulldog, has been an editorial success, published by McSweeneys and translated by Megan McDowell. She currently lives in Miami where she writes a column for the online journal El Estornudo and Hyprmedia Magazine.

Sony Ton-Aime (Haiti, 1991) is the author of the chapbook LaWomann and a forthcoming Haitian Creole translation of the book Olympic Hero: The Story of Lennox Kilgour. He is the co-founding editor of ID13 — an online publication that published creative works by inmates he led in poetry workshops at the Lake Erie Correctional Institute. His works have appeared in Brainchild, La Revista PingPong, The Oakland Review, Dunes Review, Poets.org, and more. A native of Haiti who first came to the United States in 2010, Ton-Aime received his MFA in creative writing and poetry and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Kent State University. He is director of literary arts at Chautauqua