The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Michelle Rodríguez Olivero, also known as Michelle RO, was born in 1989 in Carolina, Puerto Rico. She is a Puerto Rican writer, performer, and cultural curator. She holds a BA in comparative literature and audiovisual communication with a second minor in art and technology from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. She is currently completing her interuniversity MA in cultural curation at Spain’s University of Valencia and the Polytechnic University of Valencia. She is the author of the poetry books Ataque de risa/Ataque de llanto (Letra y Píxel, 2013) and Creatura (AG Ediciones, 2018) as well as the short story collection Medidas a ojo (2014), which has been translated into French and English. Since 2008, RO has also expressed herself through performance art. Her most notable performances include “En Blanco” (2009), “Cuerpo de tierra” (2011), “MujerSuela” (2015), “Vestiduras duras”(2017), and “Torturas pasivas” (2019). She has published poems in Puerto Rico, Chile, México, España, and Uruguay. In 2017, she won first place in the Spanish journal La Oca Loca’s International Poetry Contest. In 2008, she won the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico’s Literary Contest and in 2010 she won the American University Poetry Contest. In 2016, the First National Forum of Women Poets of the Atlantic was dedicated to both her and Magaly Quiñones and took place in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico. In 2020, she created and organized the Escritura Creativa Rompiendo para Abrir workshop series, which led to a series of musicalized poems that became the Voceteo Feminista. This initiative was part of the Campaña Internacional de 16 Days of Activism Against Domestic Violence and the Puerto Rico Human Right Festival. In 2015, she created Escridiantes, an online platform to share the literary work of children and young students, a project that is still being developed.

Works Cited

Rodríguez-Olivero, Michelle. Interview. Conducted by Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, 30 June 2021.