Professor of Spanish José R. Ballesteros had several of his poems published in the Summer/Fall 2022 edition of The Journal of the South Central MLA (John Hopkins University Press).
Each of Ballesteros' poems is published with a translated counterpart, one in Spanish and one in English. Thematically, the poems address empowering the outing of traumatic experiences from a global perspective to local to personal. He explained that each work “deals with ‘translated’ material a little differently,” in order to make it explicit that, “translation and multilingualism are as heterogeneous and dynamic and creative as creative monolingualism.”
Ballesteros has been teaching at St. Mary’s College of Maryland since 2002 and has published several poems in journals in the U.S. and in Europe while also working as a translator of poetry. In 2012 he founded Zozobra Publishing, an independent literary press that publishes bilingual editions of previously unpublished Latino and Latina U.S. poetry. His book of his poems, "Polvo Enamorado/Lovedust" was published by Izote Press (2014). He serves as contributing editor of poetry for the Handbook of Latin American Studies of the Library of Congress.
