Roque Raquel Salas Rivera
Roque Raquel Salas Rivera is a Puerto Rican poet, educator, and translator of trans experience. His honors include being named Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, the Premio Nuevas Voces, and the inaugural Ambroggio Prize. Among his seven poetry books are lo terciario/ the tertiary (Noemi, 2019), longlisted for the National Book Award and winner of the Lambda Literary Award, and while they sleep (under the bed is another country) (Birds LLC, 2019), which inspired the title for no existe un mundo poshuracán at the Whitney Museum.
He has edited the anthologies Puerto Rico en mi corazón (Anomalous, 2019) and La piel del arrecife: Antología de poesía trans puertorriqueña (La Impresora, 2023). The Rust of History (Circumference, 2022), his translation of poetry by Sotero Rivera Avilés, was longlisted for ALTA’s National Translation Award, and his translation of Ada Limón’s poem dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission is currently on its way to Jupiter’s moon. Other translation projects include Hijas de América Latina (Ed. Sandra Guzmán, HarperCollins Español, 2023) and animal fiero y tierno/ fierce and tender animal (Angelamaría Dávila, CENTRO, 2024). In 2024, he received a grant from TEN:TACLES to co-create “We Had Nothing to Lose”: The Speeches and Writings of Sylvia Rivera.
In September 2025, Graywolf Press published his epic poem Algarabía. Roque currently teaches in the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, is the Creative Editor for sx salon: a small axe literary platform and serves the needs of a fierce cat named Pietri.
