Yvonne Denis-Rosario

Yvonne Denis Rosario (born March 9, 1967) is an Afro-Puerto Rican storyteller, poet, librettist, columnist and academic. A former president of the Puerto Rican PEN International Centre, she is also a professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus.

Biography

Yvonne Denis Rosario was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on March 9, 1967, one of the seven children of Alejandrina Rosario Román, a public employee, and Juan Denis Estrada, a dry-cleaning business owner. Her maternal great-grandmother, Josefa "Maita" Osorio Villarán (1860–1953), had been kidnapped from Benin, West Africa, and enslaved in Puerto Rico, before achieving her freedom. Her publications examine issues of race and racism in Puerto Rico.

Denis Rosario is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.

Honours she has received include the Nacional Instituto de Literatura Puertorriqueña Award and the Fifth International Prize Award of Journalism and Literature. She has been a guest columnist for El Nuevo Día newspaper, has taught at Ana G. Méndez University and at Metropolitan University, and since 2015 has taught at UPR-RP, where she is a professor of literature.