Lourdes Vázquez is a writer born in Santurce, Puerto Rico and a resident of the United States. Her poetry, short stories and essays have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers. Many of her works have been translated into Catalan, English, French, Galician, Italian, Mixtec, Portuguese, Romanian, and Swedish. She is a member of the PEN American Center and of the Poetry Project and also a Board Member of Center for Latino Arts and Culture at Rutgers University. She is Librarian Emeritus of Rutgers University, where she worked for many years. Vázquez was awarded the Honorable Mention for the National Poetry Series 2014 Paz Prize for Poetry as well as an Honorable Mention for the Premio NacionalLuis Lloréns Torres, Casa de los Poetas, 2014. She was Judge for the BorderSenses Literary Prize in Fiction 2014 and Member of the Literature Panel for the New York Foundation for the Arts, Urban Artist Initiative 2008.
Collaborations
Vázquez has collaborated with a group of artists. Some of these collaborations include the artist's book, Salmos del cuerpo ardiente by Consuelo Gotay and the videos Meche en doble luna llena by Adál Maldonado and Cat = Cat by Andrea Hasselager. She has also collaborated twice with Yarisa Colón Torres: Cibeles que sueña=Cybele, As She Dreams.
Awards
In 1988 Vázquez's book Las Hembras was selected by El Nuevo Día newspaper as one of the Puerto Rican ten best books of the year, and Aterrada de cuernos y cuervos, a biography of the poet Marina Arzola, received the same distinction in 1990. In 2001, Vázquez was awarded the "50 Most Distinguished Latinas in the Tri-State Area Award" by El Diario-La Prensa newspaper. She was the winner of the Juan Rulfo Short Story Award in 2002. In 2004, her Bestiary: Selected Poems 1986-1997 received an Honorable Mention in the ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Awards. Bestiary was selected also as one of the "May–June 2004 Picks" by the Small Press Review. Her novel Sin ti no soy yo is part of The New Essential Guide to Spanish Reading, compiled by the organization, America Reads Spanish and its English translation Not Myself Without You was selected as part of LatinoStories.com's "2013 Top Ten New Latino Authors to Watch".
Archives
In 2008 the Library and Archives of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies / CUNY invited her to donate her documents. See: Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Library and Archives, Collection Descriptions.
Publications
La rosa mecánica. Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracán, 1991.
Historias de Pulgarcito. Río Piedras, P.R.: Editorial Cultural, 1999.
Hablar sobre Julia: Julia de Burgos: bibliografía 1934- 2002. Austin, TX: SALALM Secretariat, 2002.
Desnudo con Huesos=Nude with Bones. La Candelaria, 2003.
Park Slope. Duration Press 2003.
May the transvestites of my island... Translation by Rosa Alcalá. New York: Belladona Press, 2004.
Obituario. Babab, 2004.
Bestiary: Selected Poems 1986-1997. Translation by Rosa Alcalá. Tempe: Bilingual Review Press, 2004.
Not Myself Without You. Translation by Bethany Korps-Edwards. Tempe, AZ: Bilingual Review Press, 2012.
Appunti dalla Terra Frammentata = Registros del Broken-Up Land. Translation by Manuela Derosas. Italy: EDIBOM Edizione Letterarie, Serie Collana Isla, 2012.
Le Extrait I. Ca: El Gallo Rojo, 2014. Translation by Philippe Burgos.
Adagio con fugas y ciertos afectos: mis mejores cuentos. Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 2013.
