While San Juan, Puerto Rico has been my home for 25 years, I grew up in the state of Texas and have lived in Japan, Austria, and Germany. 

I earned my B.A. in cultural anthropology and M.A. in Latin American studies (with concentrations in history and anthropology) at the University of Texas at Austin. Later I received my Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Puerto Rico's Río Piedras Campus. 

Poetry helped me survive the pandemic in pretty much one piece and also led me to complete an M.F.A. in creative writing at New York University's program in Paris. My thesis, "Night Twenty-One," was completed under the direction of Professor Catherine Barnett.  Its a collection of about 50 poems. 

I have been a Fulbright Scholar as well as a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as the American Philosophical Society.

Currently, I am the Director of Institute of Caribbean Studies at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras. I coordinate the Conferencias Caribeñas lecture series. I also teach English and linguistics at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

In addition to writing poetry, I enjoy translating between English and Spanish.  Recently I translated work by the Cuban poet Oscar Cruz, one of the editors of the literary journal titled La Noria.

- Toni Morrison