Yael Valencia Aldana

Yael Aldana is a Caribbean Afro-Latinx/e writer and poet. She is the author of the poetry collection, Black Mestiza (University Press of Kentucky, 2025) and the chapbook, Alien(s) (Bottlecap Press, 2023). She is a Pushcart Prize winner and the winner of the University Press of Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Series Prize 2023 in poetry, a finalist in the AWP Kurt Brown Scholarship in Creative Nonfiction. She earned her M.F.A. in creative writing from Florida International University (FIU). Her work has appeared in Torch Literary Arts, Cutbank Literary Journal, and Obsidian, Nelle Journal, among others. Her work has been featured in Poets & Writers, Ms. Magazine, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, and Hip Latina, among others.  She is a member of the Aunt Lute Books board, and she teaches creative writing in Southern California, where she lives with her family and pets.