Afroalgorhythms

Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro is an internationally renowned Afro-Puerto Rican novelist, short story writer, and poet committed to Afroqueer justice campaigns, community pedagogy, and counter-narrative. Since 2015, she has directed the Cátedra de Mujeres Negras Ancestrales, a creative writing project at EDP University. She won the Premio Nacional del Instituto de Literatura Puertorriqueña in 2008 and the Premio Nacional del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña in 2012 and 2015. In 2013, her book of short stories, Negras, earned her the PEN Club of Puerto Rico National Short Story Prize and is now featured in Yegua de Troya's inaugural collection (Penguin Random House). In 2018, she published Pelo Bueno, a children's book that celebrates natural hair and pride in one's roots. Her poetry collection Afrofeministamente, winner of the 2021 PEN International National Poetry Prize, was published in Portuguese in 2025; Cüiruba, Libro de las Afrodivinidades, an Afro bible that reimagines spirituality away from the Christian canon, was released in 2025; and a stage adaptation of "Las aventuras de la Pirata Mota" premiered in 2026. Yolanda has been invited to speak at Harvard University, Yale University, Spelman College, the University of Lausanne, the Madrid Book Fair, the AfrikasAfriques Festival in Switzerland, and the FIL Bogotá, among others. Her literary career was recently recognized by Cátedra Carlos Fuentes de Literatura Hispanoamericana (UNAM) and her publications lead satellite projects in Latin America, such as the Afrocaracolas: Saberes Itinerantes collective. A Writer-in-Residence at EDP University, Yolanda supports the curatorial initiatives of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico, the Swiss-Cuban project Noircir Wikipédia, and directs the Coalición Interuniversitaria de Saberes Afro de Puerto Rico.

Achy Obejas is the author of the forthcoming The Boy Kingdom/El reino de los varones , a bilingual collection of prose poems that offers a meditation on queer motherhood and raising sons. She also authored Boomerang/Bumerán, a bilingual collection of poetry written in a mostly gender-free English and Spanish that addresses immigration, displacement, love and activism; the story collection The Tower of the Antilles, a PEN/Faulkner finalist, among other honors; and the novel Days of Awe, which was a Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year. As a translator, Havana-born Achy has worked with Rita Indiana, Junot Díaz and Megan Maxwell, among others.

Shantall Laracuente Soto is a Puerto Rican writer, researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Salamanca. She holds an M.A. in Spanish and Hispanic American Literature from the University of Salamanca and a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, as well as a Certification in Women and Gender Studies. Shantall is writing a dissertation on Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro's narrative work.