Xavier Cavazos earned his MFA in 2013 from Iowa State University where he served as poetry editor for Flyway: Journal
of Writing and the Environment. Cavazos was the Nuyorican Poets Café 1993 “Fresh Poet” Award winner, awarded by
Miguel Algarín, as well as the café’s 1995 Grand Slam Champion. His poetry has been published in such anthologies as,
Verses That Hurt: Pleasure and Pain from the POEMFONE Poets (St. Martin’s Press), Under a Pomegranate Tree: The best New
Latino Erotica, edited by Ray Gonzalez, (Washington Square Press), Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, edited by
Bob Holman and Miguel Algarín, (Henry Holt Press), and has poetry forthcoming in the 2015 Best American
Experimental (BAX) from Wesleyan University Press. Cavazos was the 2011 and 2012 “Discovery”/ Boston Review
Poetry Contest Runner-Up and is the author of Barbarian at the Gate, selected by Thomas Sayers Ellis as part of the
Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets Chapbook Series (2013) and Diamond Grove Slave Tree, the inaugural
Prairie Seed Poetry Prize from Ice Cube Press (2014). Cavazos teaches in the Central Washington Writing Project,
Africana and Black Studies and in the Professional and Creative Writing Programs at Central Washington University.