writer | editor | educator

Steven Espada Dawson is a writer from East Los Angeles, currently working out of Austin, Texas. The son of a Mexican immigrant, he received his MFA from Purdue University, where he served as poetry editor for Sycamore Review. Winner of the Barriss and Iola Mills Award and the Kneale Award, his poems have most recently appeared in The Adroit Journal, New Ohio Review, Hobart, and Thrush. He has work forthcoming in The Pinch, Copper Nickel, and the 2020 Best New Poets anthology.

"He has written a remarkable poetry collection...it is an elegy and so much more. The poems are crisp and elegant, full of emotion but tightly controlled. When he pushes the envelope, and he does, it is breathtaking and uncomfortable in the best ways. He takes subtle risks and they always pay off." -- Roxane Gay

"The poems engage many liminal spaces. Steven uses the instrument of separation to reach out towards past events in order to reconcile with the present, illuminating paths for both the poet and the reader." -- Kaveh Akbar