press kit for
Rane Arroyo
Author of the poetry collections:
Columbus's Orphan
The Singing Shark
Pale Ramón
Home Movies of Narcissus
The Portable Famine
The Roswell Poems
Same-Sex Séances
Forthcoming poetry collections:
The Buried Sea: New & Selected Poems
(November 2008, University of Arizona Press)
The Sky's Weight (November 2009, Turning Point Press)
A Short Story Collection:
How To Name A Hurricane
Performed Plays:
The Amateur Virgin, Buddha and the Señorita, Tiara Tango, Emily Dickinson in Bandages, A Family In Figleaves, Prayers For A Go-Go Boy, Honeymoon Rehearsals, House With Black Windows (with the poet Glenn Sheldon), Red House On Fire, and Horatio: An Inquisition.
Published Plays:
Buddha and the Señorita, Sex With The Man-in-The-Moon, Spanish Moon, Bed But No Breakfast, Fade To White (with the poets Glenn Sheldon and Diane Williams), Honeymoon Rehearsals, and A Lesson In Writing Love Letters.
Works-in-Progress:
Poems: Tangible (in-progress); Memoirs: Naked Like A Constellation (in-progress); Fiction: Jocks In Jocks (begun); Play: The Blind Rooster That Ate The Sun (completed draft).
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Biography:
Rane Arroyo is a Puerto Rican/Latino who was born in Chicago, the city where he began his career as a performance artist in the art galleries of the 1980's. Falling in love with the writing aspects of his solo theater work, he began publishing poems and stories in small and major magazines and eventually found a wide readerships from many different groups.
Beside being included in the newest Heath Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Arroyo won the 2004-05 John Ciardi Poetry Prize for The Portable Famine; the 1997 Carl Sandburg Poetry Prize for his book The Singing Shark; a 1997 Pushcart Prize for the poem "Breathing Lessons" as published in Ploughshares. Other awards include: Stonewall Books Chapbook Prize; The Sonora Review Chapbook Prize, the Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Prize, and, recently, a 2007 Ohio Arts Council Excellence Award in Poetry.
He is a professor at the University of Toledo. Arroyo earned his Ph.D. in English/Cultural Studies from the University of Pittsburgh where he wrote his dissertation on issues surrounding the Chicago Renaissance that parallel the building of a contemporary Latino literary canon. He is currently the co-Vice President of the Board of Directors for AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) and also the co-Chair for the 2009 Chicago Conference.. Recent scholarship on his poetry has focused upon or will focus upon Arroyo's Caribbean sequences, his rewriting of modernist texts, Bruce Springsteen's presence in his poetry, and his gay Chicago's use of masculine spaces in his work.
For an overview of his CV, click here.
Book Blurbs:
POETRY:
from the forthcoming THE BURIED SEA: NEW & SELECTED POEMS (University of Arizona Press)
"He is the unattainable Caribbean moon. He is the eternally naked wearer of disguises. The Buried Sea: New and Selected Poems is a powerful addition to the American literary landscape." Connie May Fowler.
"Let us call 'Junito' by his many names: Mapmaker, Merman, Motownito, locksmith, Baldwin, and Neruda's illegitimate son!" Frank X. Walker.
SAME-SEX SEÁNCES (New Sins Press)
"Rane Arroyo's poems are passports to his passions." Emanuel Xavier.
"He writes because has to, not to exorcise himself of the ghosts that haunt him." Dr. Betsy A. Sandlin.
"Arroyo gets to play the role of Dionysus. . .and other tricksters and transformers." Robert Miltner.
THE ROSWELL POEMS (WordFarm Press)
"Arroyo is half Norman Rockwell half Jackson Pollack, sketching photographically while splashing like a wild man. The reds of his small town nobodies merge with the blues of his own movieland dreams and the blacks and whites of what really happened. Or did it? Is Truth really Beauty? What can we know except this country is almost too weird to believe, but we open our eyes every day, and believe we must. The Roswell Poems is Americana at its most beautiful and bizarre." Barbara Hamby.
"This book is a tour de force, interweaving individual stories with history, present time and future, and the mythic exerting its paradoxical truths and possibilities through it all. The Roswell Poems are America, right up to 9/11 and beyond. To read this book is to be abducted in heart-shaking and beautiful ways by Rane Arroyo's vision-craft." Susan Deer Cloud.
"The 20th Century is full of footnotes," writes Rane
Arroyo. In The Roswell Poems, the footnotes for Roswell, New Mexico,
1947, are written in couplets, in sonnets, in lyrical dramatic monologues,
chatroom IMs, and imaginary film trailers. What happened in Roswell takes on
21st Century political significance in Arroyo's newest and most accomplished
work, and reminds us that "logic/ (is) a dreamer with holes in its pockets" and
that "mystery is/ one of the names that God wears." Kathy Fagan.
“Erotic, irreverent, mournful, political, Arroyo’s lyrics and narratives surprise, often by juxtaposing literary erudition and popular culture within the same stanza. The result is a hybrid poetics all his own.” Robin Becker, contest judge.
“Rane Arroyo’s elegies and celebrations shine with details as revelations. . . .Arroyo’s poems explore our various Americas, imagined and otherwise, in language by turns playful and profound, and in images both surprising and apt.” Reginald Shepherd.
“Rane Arroyo’s The Portable Famine continues the circulating queer sailor-merman odyssey begun in his earlier works. This volume represents the most powerful articulation to date of that odyssey” Dr. María DeGuzmán.
Home Movies of Narcissus (University of Arizona Press, 2002)
“Full of delights, surprises, wisdom, new ways of perceiving the ordinary and the ecstatic.” Steve Orlen.
“Searing poetry of identity. . .Fantastic.” Luis Alberto Urrea.
“Arroyo works in a Spanish-language tradition of larger-than-life autobiographical verse” Library Journal.
Pale Ramón (Zoland Books, 1998)
“Rane Arroyo wears his politics on one sleeve, and his ample heart on the other, as did Neruda. Unlike the great Chilean poet, Arroyo has a wicked sense of humor…an original new voice in American poetry.” Richard Katrovas.
"Rane Arroyo is a modern Elijah, a prophet in eternal exile. . . turning his poems into explorations of our divided self. A talent to follow.” Ilan Stavans.
“Arroyo is one of our most valuable cultural workers, and this book is a beautiful work of art.” Maggie Anderson.
“The vibrancy and energy of Arroyo’s language and imagery are truly dazzling, whether he’s writing about Puerto Rico or Pittsburgh.” Jim Daniels.
The Singing Shark (Bilingual Press, 1996)
Winner of the 1997 Carl Sandburg Prize
“. . .a wonderful postmodern mix of praise and protest that reaches the reader with considerable bite but also with fine humor and great heart” Martha Collins
“A spoof, a celebration, a lament, a euphoric ride.” Toi Derricotte.
“The poetry of Rane Arroyo is in-your-face and visionary at the same time.” Adrian C. Louis.
“like falling in the eye of a hurricane.” Alberto Sandoval.
FICTION:
HOW TO NAME A HURRICANE (University of Arizona Press, 2005)
A Book Of Short Stories
“Funny, sexy, political, and with linguistic verve to burn . . . [these] fictions sing all the colors of the rainbow and then some.” Robin Lippincott.
“By the end of this book, you’ll be naked enough to feel the green sparks of another body beside you in the darkened room.” Maurice Kilwein Guevara.
“At turns lyrical, bracing and even experimental, these varied fictions cement Arroyo’s place at the absolute forefront of Latino literature in America.” Luis Urrea.
“Hauntingly beautiful; tender as a sharp knife poised at the heart.” Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes.
“These compelling stories track the complexity of having to navigate through the storm of sexual, cultural, and social identity—indeed, a violent yet beautiful hurricane without a name.” Richard Blanco.
“This is a brave, honest book, well orchestrated and executed. Mr. Arroyo, in this sweet concoction of stories and poems, has masterfully created a gem of a book and a riveting read.” Virgil Suarez.