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Urayoan Noel

State Less Poet

Urayoan Noel

Urayoán Noel is a Puerto Rican poet, critic, translator, and performer who teaches at New York University and at Stetson University’s MFA of the Americas. He is the author of the critical study In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (University of Iowa Press, 2014), winner of the LASA Latino Studies Book Award, and of eight books of poetry, including Boringkén (Ediciones Callejón, 2008), named a Book of the Year by El Nuevo Día, and Transversal (University of Arizona Press, 2021), named a Book of the Year by the New York Public Library Book and also longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award. Noel’s translations include No Budu Please by Wingston González (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2018) and adjacent islands by Nicole Cecilia Delgado (UDP/DoubleCross Press/La Impresora, 2022). He has been a finalist for the National Translation Award, the Best Translated Book Award, the International Latino Book Awards, the National Poetry Series Paz Prize for Poetry, and the Modern Language Association book prizes, and his other honors include a National Books Critics Circle Small Press Highlights selection and fellowships from the Howard Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Schomburg Center, as well as a Letras Boricuas fellowship in poetry from the Mellon and Flamboyán Foundations. Noel’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York and the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico and has been published in The New York Times, Poetry, and Google Arts & Culture. His international performances include Poesiefestival Berlin, Barcelona Poesia, and the Toronto Biennial of Art, and he has been both fellow and faculty at CantoMundo and the Macondo Writers Workshop. Originally from Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, Urayoán Noel lives in the Bronx and is a translator for the Puerto Rican Literature Project (PLPR) and an editorial advisor for the Latino Poetry initiative (Library of America). He serves on the board of the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center.

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