Amy M. Alvarez

Amy M. Alvarez is the author of the poetry collection Makeshift Altar (University Press of Kentucky, 2024) and a coeditor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (West Virginia University Press, 2023). She was selected for the 2022 Best New Poets anthology, and her work has appeared in Ploughshares, the Missouri Review, Crazy Horse (Swamp Pink), and other literary journals. She has been awarded fellowships from CantoMundo, VONA, Macondo, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In 2022, she was inducted as an Affrilachian Poet.

Alvarez was born in New York City to Jamaican and Puerto Rican parents. She has taught English and humanities courses at public high schools in the Bronx, New York, and in Boston, Massachusetts. She currently teaches writing at West Virginia University.