How It Feels to Be Free
Raquel Salas Rivera and Carina del Valle Schorske discuss Latinx poetics and what it means to be a Puerto Rican poet and translator after the devastation of Hurricane Maria.
Raquel Salas Rivera
Raquel Salas Rivera is the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. They are the author of while they sleep (under the bed is another country), from Birds, LLC, and the inaugural recipient of the Ambroggio Prize from the Academy of American Poets, for their book x/ex/exis. They are also the author of six chapbooks and four other, full-length poetry books. Their fourth book, lo terciario/the tertiary, was on the 2018 National Book Award Longlist, and was selected by Remezcla, Entropy, Literary Hub, mitú, Book Riot, and Publishers Weekly as one of the best poetry books of 2018. It is a finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. From 2016 to 2018, they were coeditor of The Wanderer and coeditor of Puerto Rico en mi corazón, a collection of bilingual broadsides of contemporary Puerto Rican poets. They have received fellowships and residencies from Sundance Institute, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, the Arizona Poetry Center, and CantoMundo. They love and live for Puerto Rico, Philadelphia, and a world free of white supremacy.