Yael Valencia Aldana

Yael Aldana is a Caribbean Afro-Latinx/e writer and poet. She is the author of the chapbook, Alien(s) (Bottlecap Press) and the poetry collection, Black Mestiza (University Press of Kentucky, 2025). She is a Pushcart Prize winner and the winner of the University Press of Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Series Prize 2023 in poetry, a finalist in the AWP Kurt Brown Scholarship in Creative Nonfiction. She earned a Master’s degree in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Florida International University (FIU). Her work has appeared in Torch Literary Arts, and Cutbank Literary Journal, and Obsidian, Nelle Journal among others. Her work has also been featured by Ms. Magazine, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Hip Latina, The National Latino Book Club, among others

She is the Editor in Chief at Purple Ink Press and a member of Aunt Lute Press board. She teaches creative writing in Southern California, where she lives with her family and pets.

Yael was born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago but grew up on the neighboring island of Barbados. She moved to Brooklyn as a teenager. She hated high school and went to college at sixteen. She attended Simon’s Rock at Bard College in Massachusetts, where she earned her B.A. in Liberal Arts with a focus on Fine Arts. She stayed in school for a very long time and earned two master’s degrees, including The previously mentioned M.F.A. and an M.A. in Women, Gender, and Sexuality.