Ruben Quesada

Ruben Quesada is an American poet and critic. He was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.

In 2022, Quesada published an award-winning anthology, Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry, by University of New Mexico Press. It "explores the ways in which a people's history and language are vital to the development of a poet's imagination and insists that the meaning and value of poetry are necessary to understand the history and future of a people."

His poetry appears in The Best American Poetry and has earned multiple Pushcart Prize nominations; his writing and criticism appear in The New York Times, Harvard Review, Guernica, The American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, Kirkus Reviews and Cimarron Review.

Career
Quesada is the founder of the Latinx Writers Caucus at the Association of Writing & Writing Programs (AWP). Its initial advisor board included founding members of CantoMundo Poetry, Macondo Writers, and Letras Latinas. The caucus is dedicated to supporting Latinx and Latin American writers throughout their careers.

Quesada has taught Latinx literature, literary translation, editing, and creative writing at several institutions, including Northwestern University, The School of the Art Institute, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and Columbia College Chicago.

In 2018, Quesada published a chapbook of original poetry and literary translations of Spanish poet Luis Cernuda titled Revelations, inspired by the medieval book by Christian mystic Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love. He is also author of Next Extinct Mammal (Greenhouse Review Press, 2011), and translator of Luis Cernuda: Exiled from the Throne of Night (Aureole Press, 2008).

In 2023, The Offending Adam published a digital chapbook of poems titled Jane / La Segua. The poems reinvent La Segua, a colonial myth rooted in racism and class from Costa Rica.

Quesada has been involved in various literary organizations and initiatives, including serving as an advisor for Maps to the Next World, a literary initiative from the Smithsonian Institution. He serves on the board of the National Book Critics Circle and as VP of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) from 2021 - 2023. He was also the Chair of the award in nonfiction for the 2022 publishing year. In 2021, he launched and served as the host of the Mercy Street Reading Series, a live literary broadcast featuring contemporary poets and writers.

He is currently an editorial advisor for Jack Leg Press and teaches as an Associate Teaching Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts & Letters, and the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Additionally, he is faculty in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University-Los Angeles.

Poetry
Next Extinct Mammal (Greenhouse Review Press, 2011) ISBN 0-9655239-9-3

Chapbooks
Jane / La Segua (The Offending Adam, 2023)

Revelations (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018) ISBN 1-943977-54-2

Exiled from the Throne of Night: Selected Translations of Luis Cernuda (Aureole Press, 2008)

Anthologies
Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry (University of New Mexico Press, 2022) ISBN 0-8263-6438-1