Omar Bárcena

Omar Bárcena, born and raised straddling the line dividing Alta from Baja California, in the border city of Mexicali, Baja California, raised between his hometown and Calexico, his childhood and adolescence were divided between two countries and two languages whose border he crossed, often daily. At 18 years of age he left the currently delineated USA/México border to attend university in San Luis Obispo, California, where he obtained an architecture degree. Omar has lived in Mexicali, Calexico, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco, Paris, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Borrego Springs, but the splitting of the border has never left him. His poetry has appeared in the Hawai’i Review issue 89 – La Trayectoria del Latinx, by the University of Hawai’i in Manoa and in The Very Edge Poems, by Flying Ketchup Press of Kansas City, Missouri, of which he became a Pushcart Prize nominee in 2020, and his first collection of poetry, Poemas desde el otro lado, which deals with being on the opposite side of things, was published in 2021 by Valparaíso Ediciones of Granada, Spain; his second collection, Naturaleza Urbana was also published by Valparasio in 2025. his flash-fiction appeared in Issue 111 of Burningword Literary Journal, and was finalist for the 2024 Harbor Review Chapbook Editor’s Prize. Omar has a certificate in Creative Writing from UCLA Extension, a bilingual MFA in creative writing from Mount Saint Mary’s University of Los Ángeles, and a master's in creative writing from Universidad de Salamanca, Spain.