BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Valerie Martínez's first book of poems, Absence Luminescent (Four Way Books, 1999) won the Larry Levis Prize and a Greenwall Grant from the Academy of American Poets. Her second book, World to World, will be published by The University of Arizona Press in 2004. Martínez's poems have appeared in a number of anthologies including American Poetry: Next Generation (2000) ; The New American Poets: A Breadloaf Anthology (2000); Touching the Fire: Fifteen Poets of To day's Latino Renaissance (1998), The Best American Poetry, 1996 and Renaming Ecstasy: Latino Writings on the Sacred (Bilingual Press, 2003). Her poetry and translations (from the Spanish) have appeared in many journals and magazines including Parnassus, AGNI, Puerto del Sol, Confluence, Prairie Schooner, LUNA, The Bloomsbury Review, and the Colorado Review. Along with Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird, she edited the anthology Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Writing by Native Women of North America (Norton, 1997). Her selected translations of Uruguay's Delmira Agustini (1886-1914), Lilies of the Flesh, will be published in 2005 by Sutton Hoo Press. Martinez has degrees from Vassar College and The University of Arizona. She has taught at the Universities of Arizona and New Mexico, in the rural schools of Swaziland, and at Ursinus College. She is currenty Asst. Professor of English and Creative Writing at The College of Santa Fe.