Writer, Educator & Consultant
Artwork by Trinidad Escobar
NEWS AND EVENTS
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My consulting site is now live! Please check here for more information on the consulting and coaching services that I offer writers.
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My middle-grade novel, My Summer of Shapeshifting, placed second in the Abrams Amplify Awards!
WRITING
POETRY
Strange Horizons: "Aswang Paces Outside of Kaiser Permanente"
As/Us: "How To Prepare Your Husband for Dinner"
San Francisco Chronicle: "blankets"
Muzzle Magazine: "Serving Oysters to M.F.K. Fisher"
[PANK]: "How to Fight Back" and "After Botticelli: Imelda Marcos Posing as Venus"
FICTION
Sunday Morning Transport: "Office Auntie"
ESSAYS
Poets & Writers: "We Need New Metaphors: Reimagining Power in the Creative Writing Workshop"
PBS SoCal: "Teaching and Conversing with Southern Californian Ancestor Poets"
WORDS FOR GOD'S WILL FOR MONSTERS
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"An award winner non-stop, a deeply serious, studied set of investigations, yet, playful, a Tumbler of blurred faces, light, time, space, paint, medicine, plants and plates At the hands of a spirit-caller-writer, word-levitator of the 21st Century. One of a kind."
JUAN FELIPE HERRERA
Poet Laureate of the United States
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"More than ever, our world needs the aswang, the werebeast, and the wisdom of the women and bold voices calling out from Rachelle Cruz's marvelous debut collection. Cruz's vision holds many worlds: from the mythical landscapes of the "death dusk" to the streets of Hayward, California,
BRYNN SAITO, Author of Power Made Us Swoon
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"...with God’s Will for Monsters, the poet conjures dreamspace,
incantation, oral history, myth, remittance slip, aswang bulletin,
greenbacks, Christ spells, and personal memory. The result is a
new-century revelation of so much glorious giggling grotesque culled
from our hidden narratives. "
PATRICK ROSAL
Author of Brooklyn Antidiluvian
BIO
Rachelle Cruz is from Hayward, California. She is the author of God's Will for Monsters, which won an American Book Award in 2018 and the 2016 Hillary Gravendyk Regional Poetry Prize. Her middle-grade novel-in-progress, My Summer of Shapeshifting, placed second in the Abrams Amplify Awards. She was appointed the 2018-2020 Inlandia Literary Laureate during which founded a summer writing program for young people, Poetry is Power, among other community projects. She co-edited Kuwento: Lost Things, an anthology of Philippine Myths with Lis P. Sipin-Gabon. The second edition of her comics resources, Experiencing Comics: An Introduction to Reading, Discussing and Creating Comics, was published in 2021. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Sunday Morning Transport,Poets & Writers Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, As/Us, Yellow Medicine Review, The Lit Pub, The Collagist, Bone Bouquet, PANK, Muzzle Magazine, Inlandia: A Literary Journey, among others. She is an organizer with The Digital Sala. Rachelle lives, loves, and writes in Southern California.
Brief Bio:
Rachelle Cruz is the author of God's Will for Monsters, which won an American Book Award in 2018 and the 2016 Hillary Gravendyk Regional Poetry Prize. She co-edited Kuwento: Lost Things, an anthology of Philippine Myths with Lis P. Sipin-Gabon. The second edition of her comics text resource, Experiencing Comics: An Introduction to Reading, Discussing and Creating Comics, was published in 2021. Her work has also appeared in Strange Horizons, Poets & Writers Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Yellow Medicine Review, among others.
Photo by Julienne Medina