Mara Pastor

Mara Pastor, a Puerto Rican poet, editor and scholar, was born in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, on March 26, 1980. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Studies from the University of Puerto Rico, a master’s degree at the University of Notre Dame, and a doctorate from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Pastor has authored six full-length poetry books in Spanish, including Deuda Natal (University of Arizona Press, 2021), translated by María José Giménez and Anna Rosenwong, which won the 2020 Ambroggio Award from the Academy of American Poets, selected by Pablo F. Medina; Falsa heladería (Aguadulce Ediciones, 2018); Poemas para fomentar el turismo (Neutrinos, 2015; Arcadian Boutique (UNAM, 2014), as well as the bilingual chapbooks As Though the Wound Had Heard (Cardboard House Press, 2017), also translated by María José Giménez, and Children of Another Hour (Argos Books, 2014), translated by Noel Black. 

Pastor has served as a post-doctoral researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She has also worked as an associate professor of Spanish at Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico in Ponce. She is currently an academic leader for the bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in creative writing for the School of Art, Design, and Creative Industries at Sagrado Corazón University.

In 2022, Pastor was named an inaugural Letras Boricuas Fellow by the Flamboyan Foundation. She lives in Santurce.