María Luisa Arroyo | multilingual poet & educator

Selected poetry workshops:

on American ghazals

            ° Sponsored by Straw Dog Writers Guild. Lilly Library, Florence, MA, May 2019.

            ° Sponsored by Riverwood Poetry Series. West Hartford, MA, November 2017.

            ° Massachusetts Poetry Festival, Salem, MA, 2016, 2017.

on multicultural/multilingual poetry

° Desert Nights, Rising Stars Conference, Virginia C. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Tempe, AZ, 2019

° Massachusetts Poetry Festival, Salem, MA, 2018.

            ° Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Salem, MA, 2015, 2016.

            ° Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation and Witness. Washington, DC, 2015.

            ° Pioneer Valley Reading Council, Chicopee, MA, 2013.

on ekphrastic poetry

° Annual Monson Art Exhibition, Monson House of Art, Monson, MA, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019.

Born in Manatí, PR & raised in Springfield, MA, María Luisa Arroyo was educated at Colby (BA), Tufts (MA) & Harvard (ABD) in German, her third language. She earned her MFA from the Solstice MFA program at Pine Manor College. In recognition of her numerous poetry community workshops & readings – many in partnership with the Springfield Public Library – Arroyo was named Poet Laureate (2014-2016) of Springfield and 2016 NEPR Arts & Humanities Award recipient. In 2019, she was named an Inaugural Fellow to teach a session at the 15th Annual Desert Nights Rising Stars Writers Conference at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing in Tempe, AZ. Her poems appear in many journals such as The Common, CALYX, PALABRA, and CHEST: An American Journal for Chest Physicians. Destierro Means More than Exile is her latest chapbook. Her other collections include her chapbook Flight (Thousand Hands Press, 2016) and her full-length collection, Gathering Words: Recogiendo palabras (Bilingual Review/Press, 2008). Currently, she is Assistant Professor of Writing & FYS at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, MA and lives in Springfield, her hometown.