Gisselle Yepes (they/them/elle)
is a Puerto Rican and Colombian poet, educator, and storyteller from the Bronx. Their autobiographical work is rooted in the intimate relationships between grief, memory, and silence within Puerto Rican familial dynamics and domestic spheres.
Yepes is a proud alum of the New York City public school system, who received their MFA in Creative Writing at Indiana University Bloomington, where they received the 2021 Vera Meyer Strube Prize with the Academy of American Poets. They hold a B.A. from Wesleyan University, where they earned the Winchester Fellowship, the Sophie and Anne Reed Prize, and the award for Connecticut Poetry Laureate. They are a Letras Boricuas 2022 Fellowship Recipient, Tin House Scholar, and Sundress Academy of the Arts Resident. Their nonfiction piece “On Her Waters Summoning Us to Drown” won december magazine’s 2022 Curt Johnson Prose Award in Creative Nonfiction. They are an alum of Juniper Summer Writing Institute, Anaphora Writing Residency, and DreamYard's Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium.