Dr. Raina J. León
Dr. Raina J. León is an Afro-Borica writer and author of black god mother this body (Black Freighter Press, 2022) as well as five other poetry books. She is a professor at Stonecoast MFA at the University of Southern Maine, professor emerita of English Education at Saint Mary’s College of California and founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online journal of Latinx arts. She is currently working on a hybrid manuscript that explores black feminism, mothering, and resistance in and to the academy... and a werewolf romance.
Raina received her BA in Journalism from Pennsylvania State University (2003), MA in Teaching of English from Teachers College Columbia University (2004), MA in Educational Leadership from Framingham State University (2014), MFA in Poetry at Saint Mary’s College of California (2016), and PhD in Education under the Culture, Curriculum and Change strand at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (2010).
She has received fellowships and residencies with the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, and Macondo.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
POETRY: “Scenes in the life of a lesser angel,” Poetry
POETRY: "All around, he’s there,” “An owl questions with a human face,” “Phoebe,” and others, Connotation Press
POETRY: “Banned portrait in the MAGA era: Study says black girls are ‘less innocent,’” Jung Journal
ARTICLE: "Humanizing Online Teaching," Saint Mary’s College of California
SELECTED WORKS:
black god mother this body
Black Freighter Press
profeta without refuge
Nomadic Press, 2016
sombra: (dis)locate
Salmon Poetry, 2016
Boogeyman Dawn
Salmon Poetry, 2013
Canticle of Idols
CW Books, 2008
Topics addressed in readings
Afro-Latinx identities
Black feminist and Latinx poetics
Afrofuturism
Ecopoetics
Narrative medicine
Hybridity/interdisciplinary arts and ekphrastic writing
Poetics of place
Mothering (free children)
Creative writing pedagogy
Professional skills for writers
Education for educators
SAMPLE WORKSHOP 1: Narrative Medicine or Towards an Embodied Poetics
A workshop studying Black feminist authors who write about the body as (mis)understood within medical spaces. Students will start with an external perception of embodied experience through our interrogation of our own medical records.
SAmple workshop 2: Futurecasting
A workshop for the emerging writer. Have you ever felt lost in your own writing? Your writing dreams are myriad and arrive like a flood around you. What is this creation and how will it live beyond this page (and should it)?
TESTIMONIALS
“Here is the work of a poet who possesses the graceful sensuality of dusk & the unflinching eye of the butcher. One senses here, that León is committed to pulling back the red curtains of our historical, familial, cultural mythologies, & rendering what is found there into deep song. The result is a landscape of lyrical acuity fueled by a myriad of languages, characters, & centers. These poems give us the voice of The Marys, the sister, abuela ‘Buela, the lovers. In León, you have an Orpheic poet who dives into the underworld of every thing—& comes back with the news.”
“With dynamic characters and complex narratives, profeta without refuge is a provocative blend of Afro Sci-Fi and eco-poetics that takes on the controversial issues of gender, Black rage, generational trauma, and race. This revolutionary collection is a test of time—for our past, present and future. It’s more than just science and emotions, León makes narrative poetry from the discord of black and brown bodies buried in U.S. history.”
