I’m a writer, poet and poetry editor, and an assistant professor of English, Women’s and Gender Studies, and American Ethnic Studies at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. I received my Ph.D. at New York University in 2011, with disciplinary concentrations in contemporary American and Latina/o literature, performance studies, and gender/sexuality studies. My book project, Queer Mediums: The Cultural Politics of Latin@ Figuration, argues against the privileging of realist aesthetics in Latina/o cultural analysis. The book examines the presentation of queer Latin@ bodies from anti-colonial writing at the turn of the century to ABC’s Ugly Betty in 2007, covering painters, playwrights, and performance artists in between.
While I lived in New York City I helped found birdsong, an antiracist/queer positive collective and small press that publishes art and writing. My own poems have appeared most recently in FENCE Magazine #25, THEthePoetry.org as Poet of the Week, and in The Best of PANIC! anthology, edited by Charlie Vázquez under Fireking Press.
I grew up in North Hollywood, CA, and Miami, FL.