Roque Salas Rivera

Roque Raquel Salas Rivera (born 1985) He currently lives in Puerto Rico.

Education and early life

Salas Rivera was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico During his childhood years, he lived in California, Nebraska, Alabama, and Texas. He returned to Puerto Rico during his teenage years and young adulthood, moving to Philadelphia for graduate studies. His grandfather, Sotero Rivera Avilés, was a Puerto Rican poet belonging to the Guajana Generation, as is his mother, linguist Yolanda Rivera Castillo.

Salas Rivera attended the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez for his undergraduate degree, and had an instrumental role in organizing student protests at that campus in 2010.

His work lo terciario/the tertiary addresses the Puerto Rican debt crisis and impact of the 2016 United States PROMESA Law that transferred control of the island's finances and outstanding debt to an external control board. Salas Rivera titled each book section after Marxist economic ideas from Das Kapital: "The Debt-Production Process," "The Debt-Circulation Process," and "Notes on a Derailed Circulation", beginning each poem with a quote by Karl Marx, as both a critique and a subversion of Marxist language.

Salas Rivera identifies as non-binary and uses he/him and they/them pronouns. He has adopted the Spanish word "buchipluma", in as a neologism for a "non-binary feathered butch" to describe his gender identity. One of his inspirations is the Puerto Rican Latin trap singer Bad Bunny.

During his tenure as Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, Salas Rivera created a multilingual poetry festival called "We (Too) Are Philly" inspired by the work "I, Too" by the African-American poet Langston Hughes. The goal of the organizers was to diversify the poetry scene to encourage the mixing or desegregation of audiences, while selecting locations of significance to particular Philadelphia neighborhoods that usually do not host poetry readings.

Roque's 2025 book, Algarabía, is a trans epic poem written in Puerto Rican Spanish and English. Both Spanish and English covers incorporate a centaur illustration by Natalia Bosque Chico. It won the 2026 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature.

Personal life

Salas Rivera lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 2017, Salas Rivera and Allison Harris raised thousands of dollars to assist lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Puerto Ricans who were impacted by Hurricane Maria that year. Through his efforts, he was able to bring 5 queer/transgender persons to the United States and support them, with assistance from the Mazzoni Center. 2017: tierra intermitente/intermittent land. Ediciones Alayubia, 1st ed. 2017: Desdominios. Douda Correria. (Portuguese translation) OCLC 1076641364 2016: oropel/tinsel. OCLC 1021770124 2011: Caneca de anhelos turbios, OCLC 764494213

Artist books Gringo Death Coloring Book, with art by Erica Mena and Mariana Ramos Ortiz

Editorial works 27 :: Indigenous Futures and Imagining the Decolonial, co-edited with BBP Hosmillo and Sarah Clark, Anomalous Press. Puerto Rico en Mi Corazón, co-edited with Erica Mena, Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, and Carina del Valle Schorske, Anomalous Press. The Wanderer, co-editor, 2016-2018.

Contributor to anthologies 2018: Small blows against encroaching totalitarianism., OCLC 1049785850

Salas Rivera has also published in periodicals such as the Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, Apiary, Apogee, BOAAT, and the Boston Review.

Awards and honors

Salas Rivera was a resident artist of the 2018-2019 Kimmel Center Jazz Residency, a 2019 Playwright Fellow at the Sundance Institute Theater Program, a 2020 writer in residence for the Norwegian Festival of Literature, and a 2020 resident artist of the MacDowell Colony.

He was chosen as the fourth poet laureate of Philadelphia in 2018, under the auspices of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

His work lo terciario/the tertiary was longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry in 2018, and won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature in poetry.