J. L. Torres
J.L. Torres was born in Cayey, Puerto Rico. He grew up in the South Bronx and received all of his formal education in the United States, then returned to the Puerto Rico. After years teaching at the college level there, he returned to New York. He has also lived in Madrid, Chicago, Los Angeles, and most recently in Barcelona on a Fulbright fellowship.
Claiming to write from “the post barrio universe,” Torres focuses on the diasporican experience—living in the inbetweeness that forms and informs the Puerto Rican experience in the U.S. and the island. He has published poems in journals such as the North American Review, Denver Quarterly, the Americas Review, Crab Orchard Review, Bilingual Review, Connecticut Review, Tulane Review, Puerto del Sol, among others, most of which are published in Boricua Passport (2Leaf Press, Spring 2014).
His fiction publications include The Family Terrorist and Other Stories and the novel The Accidental Native, as well as stories in various journals and magazines including one anthologized in Growing Up Latino.
Torres earned a PhD from the University of Southern California and an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. He is a co-founder and the editor of the Saranac Review. With Carmen Haydee Rivera he is the co-editor of the anthology, Writing Off the Hyphen: New Perspectives on the Literature of the Puerto Rican Diaspora.
Claiming to write from “the post barrio universe,” Torres focuses on the diasporican experience—living in the inbetweeness that forms and informs the Puerto Rican experience in the U.S. and the island. He has published poems in journals such as the North American Review, Denver Quarterly, the Americas Review, Crab Orchard Review, Bilingual Review, Connecticut Review, Tulane Review, Puerto del Sol, among others, most of which are published in Boricua Passport (2Leaf Press, Spring 2014).
His fiction publications include The Family Terrorist and Other Stories and the novel The Accidental Native, as well as stories in various journals and magazines including one anthologized in Growing Up Latino.
Torres earned a PhD from the University of Southern California and an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. He is a co-founder and the editor of the Saranac Review. With Carmen Haydee Rivera he is the co-editor of the anthology, Writing Off the Hyphen: New Perspectives on the Literature of the Puerto Rican Diaspora.
Torres is professor of English at SUNY-Plattsburgh, where he teaches American literature, Latina/o literatures, and creative writing. He lives in Plattsburgh, New York, with his wife and two sons.