Juan Velasco-Moreno
Juan Velasco-Moreno is a Professor in the Department of English, at Santa Clara University (California) where he teaches courses in creative writing and Latinx Literature. His first novel, Enamorado, was published in Spain in 2000. His work of poetry was also included in the anthology, Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Literature from California in 2002.
His academic book, Las fronteras móviles: tradición, modernidad y la búsqueda de ‘lo mexicano’ en la Literatura Chicana contemporánea, was published at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León in 2003. With David Pace, in 2008, he published a multi-media DVD of poetry and photography, Call Me When I Am Gone based on his time in El Salvador.
He published Massacre of the Dreamers in Spain in 2011. Ron Hansen describes the work in the introduction as a “frightening, tragic and heartbreaking” poetic meditation on the Old West. His short stories and poetry have been published in multiple venues around the world, including the anthology, New California Writing 2013, published by Heyday.
In 2016, he finished another academic book, Cultural Resistance and Collective Identity in Contemporary Chicana/o Autobiography, published by Palgrave MacMillan.
In 2020, the memoir, 1988: NY-LA was published by editorial Polibea in Spain. In 2021, h co-authored the anthology, In Xochitl in Cuicatl: 100 Years of Latinx Poetry.
He is currently hosting a blog (WriteHereWriteNow) at Santa Clara University that provides insights on writing and personal growth, and he is also working on a memoir. The act of writing is deeply connected with the act of sharing healing and social justice around the world. Those connections led Professor Velasco to create the NGO Programa Velasco in 2007, whose mission is to promote education and economic empowerment for children and women in El Salvador. For more information visit this website.