“!El MERO MERO EL ESPIRITU DE PUERTO RICO, REY DE LOS COQUIS, YOUR FAVORITE POET’S POET ROQUE RAQUEL SALAS RIVERA IS COMING TO THE ONE TRUE PORTAL OF SAN PANCHO TO THROW DOWN CON LOS BIG HOMIES JOSIAH LUIS ALDERETE, TATIANA LUBOVISKI-ACOSTA, Y ANGEL DOMINGUEZ. BE HERE DECEMBER 3RD OR GO TO HELL!”-Angel Dominguez/ Tia Sad Eyes

Roque Raquel Salas Rivera (he/they) is a Puerto Rican poet and translator of trans experience born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. His honors include being named Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, the Premio Nuevas Voces, and the inaugural Ambroggio Prize. Among his six poetry books are lo terciario/ the tertiary (Noemi Press, 2019), longlisted for the National Book Award and winner of the Lambda Literary Award, and while they sleep (under the bed is another country) (Birds LLC, 2019), which inspired the title for no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His most recent book, antes que isla es volcán/ before island is volcano (Beacon Press, 2022), won the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award and the Premio Campoy-Ada. Salas Rivera has edited the anthologies Puerto Rico en mi corazón (Anomalous Press, 2019) and La piel del arrecife: Antología de poesía trans puertorriqueña (La Impresora & Atarraya Cartonera, 2023). From 2016 to 2018, he was a coeditor and translator for the literary journal The Wanderer. As co-founder of El proyecto de la literatura puertorriqueña/ The Puerto Rican Literature Project, he served as Supervisor of the Translation Team and Investigator from April 2021 until September 2023, when he retired from the project. The Rust of History (Circumference Press, 2022), a selection of the poetry by his grandfather Sotero Rivera Avilés, was longlisted for the Pen Award for Poetry in Translation and ALTA’s National Translation Award. Salas Rivera also translated The Book of Conjurations by Irizelma Robles, winner of the Sundial Literary Translation Award. His translation of Ada Limón’s poem dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will be traveling to Jupiter’s moon in 2024. Salas Rivera holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania and lives, teaches, and creates in Puerto Rico. Accompanied by his cat, Pietri, he is currently working on the trans epic poem Algarabía, which will be published in 2025 by Graywolf Press.

Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta was raised in Los Angeles, California by a family of single women, and grew up traveling and living across the western United States and Mexico with their mother, a cultural anthropologist. Their latest book is La Movida, published by Nightboat Books in 2022. Tatiana’s first book, The Easy Body, was published by Timeless, Infinite Light in 2017; their writing has appeared in SFMOMA Open Space and Wolfman New Life Quarterly. They live in a rent controlled apartment in the Mission District of San Francisco, around the corner from where they work as a barista at a pop and pop café video rental store hybrid and as a peer sexual health educator at CCSF’s Project SURVIVE.

Angel Dominguez is a Latinx poet and artist of Yucatec Maya descent. They were born in Hollywood, California, and raised in Van Nuys by their immigrant family. They now live among the Santa Cruz Mountains in Bonny Doon.

Josiah Luis Alderete is a full blooded Pocho spanglish speaking poeta who has been an active part of La Area Bahia’s Spoken Word scene for over twenty years. He was one of the founding members of outspoken word group The Molotov Mouths and is the curator and host of the long running monthly Latinx reading series Speaking Axolotl. He has published two books“Baby Axolotls & Old Pochos”(2021 by Black Freighter Press) and the chapbook “Fuchi Faces De Los Estados Jodidos”(For The Pueblo Art Collective 2023). This year he had the honor of being Mazza Writer in Residence at The Poetry Center, San Franciasco State University. Currently he tends the 24th street portal as one of the owners of Medicine For Nightmares Bookstore & Galeria and resides in North Richmond where he is waiting for Quetzalquatl to arrive.