Dan Vera is a writer, editor, watercolorist, and literary historian. The recipient of the Oscar Wilde Award for Poetry and the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize, he’s the co-editor of Imaniman: Poets Writing In The Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute Books) and author of two books of poetry, Speaking Wiri Wiri (Red Hen Press) and The Space Between Our Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books). His work is featured by the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and included in college and university curricula, various journals including Notre Dame Review, Poet Lore, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly; and in anthologies including Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, The Traveler’s Vade Mecum, and The Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South. The CantoMundo and Macondo Writing Fellow has been a featured reader around the country including the Dodge Poetry Festival, the Poetry Foundation, and New York City’s Poets House. The longtime chair of Split This Rock Poetry, he currently serves on the board of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP).
“He’s the sharp-eyed observer in the corner who doesn’t say much, but makes every word count. He handles the political and the personal with equal grace, even as the lines blur.” Martin Espada
“a talented, sophisticated poet who is a master at playing with words.” LatinoStories.com‘s “Top Ten “New” Latino Author to Watch (and Read)”
“When reading Dan Vera, we are married to the 3 hearts of poetry: intelligence, style, and honor. This is the most satisfying book of poems we can read if we want to witness language with a real poet as its servant.” Grace Cavalieri
“Vera’s book couldn’t come at a better time, with immigration reform and LGBT issues at the forefront of the national debate.” Florida Agenda
“These poems are charged with a poignant longing and the kind of humor that grins as it bleeds. Speaking Wiri Wiri is also a careful look at the untraceable impacts of the words that surround us. Each of us—whether we mean to or not—looks back to find out where we are and why we are what we are. Dan Vera’s new collection operates as a kind of soulful blueprint for this search. Tim Seibles
“Vera writes so we know how it was for him, and that makes us more alive too. He makes story link to poetry so that it matters to others. He allows the writing to evolve voluntarily and doesn’t push to persuade; letting people, sights, tastes, smells do the talking.” Washington Independent Review of Books
“Vera does not shy away from challenging dominant notions of separateness and togetherness, celebrating the beauty of border-crossing weeds and “all the names we give to [their] persistence.” Goodreads
“so much of Vera’s work is about a simultaneous “splitness” and “togetherness” — between Cuba and the United States; between English and Spanish; between revering history and lamenting its fallout.” Lambda Literary
“a cohesive voice and message…fascinated with language and memory” Living Out Long Island
“It is language–how it shapes us, how it creates contested space, and how it can link or divide us–that Vera explores in this book.” Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide
“If I were in the classroom, I’d want to teach this book, to talk to students about the challenges and rewards of writing poetry that illustrates, as Adrienne Rich said, that the personal is political. And that we can learn from well-crafted poems, poems with narrative impulse and image, about what matters.” Goodreads
“profound knowledge of the interconnected layers of culture, politics, and history reverberates throughout Vera’s poems.” Ahron Taub
Dan Vera 