The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Claudia Becerra Méndez was born in 1990 in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. She was raised in a condominium at the border between Bayamón and Guaynabo, which she calls “Bayaguaya”. She received her B.A. in Hispanic Studies and a certificate from the Women and Gender Program at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras (UPRRP), and her Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies from Brown University. She’s the author of the poetry collection Versión del viaje (Folium, 2018). Her poems have been published in magazines and anthologies such as La pequeña, América Invertida, Rialta: Revista Literaria and Mundo Musgo. Becerra Méndez’s literary influences include Luis Palés Matos, Tomás Blanco, José María Lima, Marigloria Palma, Manuel Ramos Otero, Mara Negrón, Sylvia Figueroa, Nora Dávila, Blanca Varela, Christopher Gilbert, Judith Schalansky, Esther Kinsky, and Nicolas Jaar. Currently, she lives between Puerto Rico and New York. She’s co editor of The Puerto Rico Review and an adjunct professor in the Spanish Department at UPRRP, where she says that “the only poetry that is possible [...] is anti-poetry.”

Works Cited

Becerra, Claudia. Interview. Conducted by Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, 12 July 2022.