Claudia Castro Luna, Poet

Claudia Castro Luna served as Seattle’s Civic Poet from 2015-2017. She is the author of This City, published by Floating Bridge Press, the recipient of a King County 4Culture grant, a Jack Straw Fellow and VONA alumna. Born in El Salvador, she came to the United States in 1981. She has an MA in Urban Planning, a teaching certificate and an MFA in poetry from Mills College. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, La Bloga, City Arts, Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art, among others. Her non-fiction work can be read in the anthologies, The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the US, Northwestern University Press; Vanishing Points: Contemporary Salvadoran Narrative, Kalina Eds; and forthcoming in This Is The Place: Women Writing About Home, Seal Press. Living in English and Spanish, Claudia writes and teaches in Seattle where she gardens and keeps chickens with her husband and their three children. Since 2009, Claudia has maintained Cipota bajo la Luna, a blog with events, reviews, writings, and reflections.

Claudia will read original poetry and the work of Federico García Lorca on SMCO's opening concerts on October 11 and 15, 2017.