Maurice Kilwein Guevara
Maurice Kilwein Guevara was born in Belencito, Colombia in 1961 and
raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was educated at the
University of Pittsburgh, Bowling Green State University, and the
University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. He is Professor of English at
the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee; he is also on the faculty of the
MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. He’s received awards
from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Pennsylvania Council on
the Arts, the J. William Fulbright Commission, and the Pennsylvania
Humanities Council. His first book of poetry, entitled Postmortem
(U. of GA Press), won the Contemporary Poetry Series Competition and
was published in 1994. His second volume, Poems of the River
Spirit, was published in 1996 in the Pitt Poetry Series. His
third collection, Autobiography of So-and-so: Poems in Prose,
came out in 2001 in the Green Rose Series of New Issues Press. A
dynamic presenter of his own work, Kilwein Guevara has given poetry
performances in Mexico, Colombia, and throughout the United
States. His work has appeared in Poetry, Parnassus, Ploughshares,
Exquisite Corpse, Kenyon Review, and The Journal of the American
Medical Association. His poetry has been anthologized in Touching
the Fire: Fifteen Poets of Today’s Latino Renaissance
(Anchor/Doubleday), American Poetry: The Next Generation
(Carnegie Mellon University Press), and The New American Poets: A
Bread Loaf Anthology (U. Press of New England). His play, The
Last Bridge/El ultimo puente, was performed by the Off-Broadway
production company Urban Stages. He has written for and acted in
the experimental film To Box Clouds (Migrant Films, 2002). In
2003, he was the Richard Elman Visiting Writer at Syracuse
University. Currently, he serves as President of the Associated
Writing Programs. He is married to the poet Janet Jennerjohn, and
they have two sons.