Yolanda Nieves

Yolanda Nieves, born and raised in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, identifies as a second-generation Puerto Rican and is an activist scholar, poet, playwright, director, and educator. She is the author of two poetry books with Plain View Press: Dove Over Clouds (2007) and The Spoken Body (2010). Nieves’s research and poetry feature Latine women’s narratives about their history in Humboldt Park. Her activist projects have included teacher training in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Puerto Rico, and the Hopi Nation’s Gathering of Men and Women in Arizona. 

Nieves’s research and poems have been published in the Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, Edges and Borders journal, and Wherever I’m At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry and with After Hours Press. Nieves received the American Educational Research Association’s Outstanding Dissertation Award for Arts-Based Research in 2010 and the National Conference of Puerto Rican Women’s Woman of the Year Award in 2012. In 2014 she was awarded Northeastern Illinois University’s Distinguished Alumnus Award, and in 2016 she received the Kirchmeier Teaching Award from the North Central Council of Latin Americanists.

Nieves earned a bachelor’s and a master’s from Loyola University Chicago, a master’s from Northeastern Illinois University, and a doctorate in adult education from National Louis University. She teaches at the City Colleges of Chicago. Nieves writes that she fully embraces Mindy Nettifee’s, author of Glitter in the Blood, idea: “be intentional about your meaning even when you don’t exactly know what you mean.”