José Olivarez

José Olivarez is an author, poet and educator from Calumet City, Illinois, U.S.^[1] His first full collection of poetry is Citizen Illegal, published by Haymarket Books. Citizen Illegal was shortlisted for the 2019 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.^[2] His second poetry collection Promises of Gold, with a Spanish translation by David Ruano, was published by Macmillan Publishers.

José Olivarez
Born	Calumet City, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Author, poet, educator
Language	English
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Harvard University
Genre	Poetry

Olivarez at the 2019 Texas Book Festival

Education and early life

Jose Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants, and he graduated from Harvard University.^[1]

Career and writing

Olivarez's work has been featured in the New York Times, the Paris Review, and Poetry Magazine, among others.^[3] In 2014, he co-authored the collection Home Court.^[4] Haymarket Books published his first full collection, Citizen Illegal, in 2018. Citizen Illegal was shortlisted for the $75,000 2019 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.^[2] MacMillan Publishers released his second collection, Promises of Gold, in 2023. He is co-editor, along with Willie Perdomo and Felicia Chavez, of the anthology The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext.^[5]

He has received fellowships from several organizations, including a 2016 Poets House Emerging Poets Fellowship^[6] and a 2019 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.^[7]

Olivarez worked for the writing and education organizations Urban Word in New York^[8] and Young Chicago Authors, which produces the youth poetry festival, Louder than a Bomb.^[9] Olivarez co-hosts the podcast The Poetry Gods.^[3]

Works

• Promises of Gold, Macmillan Publishers, 2023 ISBN 9781250878496
• Citizen Illegal, Haymarket Books, 2018 ISBN 978-1608469543
• The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Haymarket Books, 2020 ISBN 9781642591293