Iliana Rocha

Iliana Rocha is the 2019 winner of the Berkshire Prize for a First or Second Book of Poetry for her newest collection, The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez available from Tupelo Press. Karankawa, her debut, won the 2014 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). The recipient of a 2020 CantoMundo fellowship and 2019 MacDowell fellowship, she has had work featured or forthcoming in the Best New Poets anthology, as well as PoetryPoem-a-DayThe NationVirginia Quarterly ReviewLatin American Literature TodayOxford American, and Blackbird> among others, and she serves as Poetry Co-Editor for Waxwing Literary Journal. She earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from Western Michigan University and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her three chihuahuas Nilla, Beans, and Migo are the loves of her life.