Celia Lisset Alvarez

Celia Lisset Alvarez is a writer and educator from Miami, Florida. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Miami and has four collections of poetry, Shapeshifting (winner of the 2005 Spire Press Poetry Award), The Stones (Finishing Line Press 2006), Multiverses (Finishing Line Press 2021), and Bodies & Words (Assure Press 2022). Her stories, poetry, and criticism have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, most recently in After Dinner Conversation, which nominated her story, “The Pool,” for a Pushcart. This is Alvarez’s second Pushcart nomination. She has also been nominated for a Best of the Net Award. She served for a year as the editor of the journal Prospectus: A Literary Offering. Alvarez was born in Spain to Cuban parents fleeing from Castro’s communist regime. They later relocated to Miami. Alvarez has always considered Miami home and lives with her husband, daughters Lucy and Sara, and her widowed mother. She has taught composition, literature, scientific, and creative writing at Florida International University, Miami Dade College, the University of Miami, and St. Thomas University, and now teaches at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy. Her work often reflects her Cuban-American upbringing and themes of isolation and grief. Multiverses, a finalist in the narrative poetry category of American Book Fest’s Best Books Award, chronicles the loss of her twenty-six-day-old son in 2018.