Yvette Siegert

Yvette Siegert was born in Los Angeles to parents from Colombia and El Salvador. She holds degrees from Columbia University and the Université de Genève. She is currently completing a doctorate in medieval and modern languages at the University of Oxford. 

Siegert is the author of Atmospheric Ghost Lights, selected by Monica Youn for the Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship Award. Siegert’s debut collection, Late Antiquity (Bloodaxe Books, 2024), traces the civil war in El Salvador. It was the winner of the James Berry Prize. She is a translator from French, Portuguese, and Spanish, including works by Corinna Bille, Piedad Bonnett, Roque Dalton, Jacinta Escudos, Herberto Helder, Amada Libertad, Chantal Maillard, Alejandra Pizarnik, Fernando Vallejo, and Juan Villoro. Her translations have been shortlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and the John Dryden International Prize. Siegert’s volume of Pizarnik’s poetry, Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962–1972 (New Directions, 2016), won the Best Translated Book Award.

A CantoMundo Fellow and Ledbury Poetry Critic, Siegert is the recipient of fellowships and support from Bread Loaf, the Jan Michalski Foundation, Hedgebrook, the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation/Pro Helvetia, Macondo, PEN/Heim, Arts Council England, the National Centre for Writing, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Siegert lives in the United Kingdom.