Alonso Llerena is a Peruvian writer, visual artist, and educator. He has earned an MFA from Bard: Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.

His current work explores the interconnection between the poetics of exile and the poetics of the remains. His words cling to concrete materiality of trace, ruins whether physical or ingrained in memory. He is a poetry and prose editor at Cobra Milk.

He is the winner of the 2023 Ninth Letter Literary Award in Poetry, a Tin House alumnus, and has received fellowships from The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and Brooklyn Poets. His work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Offing, FENCE, Cream City Review, and elsewhere.

His manuscript in progress, La Casa Roja, was a finalist for The National Poetry Series in 2023, 2022, and 2021, a finalist for the 2023 Omnidawn 1st/2nd book prize, an honorable mention and finalist for the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize 2022, the Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Prize for poetry, the YesYes Books open reading series, and a semi-finalist for the Felix Pollack Prizes and the 2023 Noemi Poetry Prize.