About

Jacqueline Balderrama is the author of Now In Color (Perugia Press 2020) and the chapbook, Nectar and Small (Finishing Line Press 2019). She grew up in Southern California and earned a BA from UC Riverside and a MFA from Arizona State University. While at ASU, she was involved in the Letras Latinas literary initiative and the ASU Prison Education Program. She completed her PhD in English with a Specialization in Creative Writing at the University of Utah.

Balderrama currently lives in Tempe, AZ where most recently she worked as the Virginia G. Piper Faculty-in-Residence leading the Thousand Languages Project and teaching as a clinical assistant professor at Arizona State University. In the final year of her residency, she was the director of the national poetry organization, CantoMundo. Her poems have received the 2013 Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize, won a 2019 Intro Journal Award, and been published in Blackbird, Poet Lore and other journals. Her fiction has received a 2016 Glendon and Kathryn Swarthout Award and has appeared or is forthcoming in the Gateway Review and Flyway Journal of Writing & Environment. Balderrama serves as poetry editor for Iron City Magazine. Her recent work is invested in hybrid identities and the environment.