| Javier Zamora | |
| Birth Place: | San Luis La Herradura, El Salvador |
| Language: | English, Spanish |
| Alma Mater: | University of California, Berkeley (BA) New York University (MFA) |
| Genre: | Poetry, Prose |
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| Subjects: | --> |
| Notableworks: | Unaccompanied, SOLITO, Nine Immigrant Years |
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| Spouse: | Jo Blair Cipriano |
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| Awards: | Wallace Stegner Fellow, NEA Fellow, Lannan Foundation Fellow, Ruth Lilly Fellow, Radcliffe Institute Fellow at Harvard University |
Javier Zamora (born 1990) is a Salvadoran poet and activist. Zamora is the author of Unaccompanied (2017), Solito (2022), and Nine Immigrant Years (2011). He has written works related towards his migration to the United States.
Zamora was born in San Luis La Herradura, El Salvador[1] and illegally immigrated to the United States at the age of nine,[2] joining his parents in California.[3] [4] His work surrounds borderland politics and race and how migration and civil war has affected him and his family. Zamora's father fled El Salvador due to the Civil war that was happening in El Salvador during the time. With Zamora's mother following shortly in 1995. After that Zamora was left in the care of his grandparents until he migrated to the United States through Guatemala, Mexico, and the Sonoran Desert at the age of nine.[5] Soon after Zamora began his eight-week journey from El Salvador to Mexico as an unaccompanied minor. Since the story of the poems is written by the eyes of the nine year old Zamora the reader can see the constant question he asked himself "What it meant to be Salvadoran crossing countries that rob him of who he is?". Due to his experiences along that journey Zamora was inspired to write his novel "1999 & Other Poems" to bring awareness to the hostile environments those crossing the boarder face.[6] In his final year of high school, visiting artist Rebecca Foust introduced Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair to the class, sparking Zamora's passion for poetry.[7]
He earned a BA at the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA at New York University and was a 2016–2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.[8] [4] At the University of California, Berkeley Zamora pursued his degree and taught in June Jordan's Poetry for the People program. This was founded by June Jordan in 1991 and is intended to serve as an arts and activism program. The programs academic focus is teaching about reading, writing, poetry and building community. [9] [10]
Zamora's chapbook Nueve Años Inmigrantes/Nine Immigrant Years won the 2011 Organic Weapon Arts Contest, and his first poetry collection, Unaccompanied,[11] was published in 2017 by Copper Canyon Press. His poetry can be found in The American Poetry Review, Best New Poets 2013, Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, The New Republic, The New York Times, Ploughshares, and Poetry.
Zamora writes in Salvadoran Caliche.[12]
Zamora's honors include Barnes & Noble Writer for Writer's Award (2016), Meridian Editors’ Prize, and the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Zamora has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, CantoMundo, Colgate University, The Frost Place,[13] MacDowell Colony, the Macondo Writers Workshop, the Napa Valley Writers' Conference, the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing, and Yaddo.[14] [8] In 2017, Zamora was awarded the Narrative Prize for "Sonoran Song," "To the President-Elect," and "Thoughts on the Anniversary of My Crossing the Sonoran Desert".[15] [16] In 2023 he received a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for . His debut work recounting his journey from Mexico to the Sonoran Desert is a New York Times Bestseller. In 2024 Zamora is the winner of a Whiting Fellowship for Nonfiction Poetry.[17] [18] He is currently a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University.[19]
Zamora was a founder, with poets Marcelo Hernandez Castillo and Christopher Soto (AKA Loma), of the Undocupoets campaign which eliminated citizenship requirements from major first poetry book prizes in the United States.[1] [20] "You're really forced into the MFA program, after which you go out and try to find a fellowship and, ideally, a book," Zamora adds. It's been a trend, and numerous pieces have been written about how the MFA route is problematic since it excludes many individuals of color.[21]
In 1999 Zamora went from El Salvador to the United States at the age of 9 as an unaccompanied minor. In 2017 Javier Zamora published Unaccompanied, a collection of poems based around his story on crossing to the United States. The title of this work is what inspired Zamora to name his book "Unaccompanied". Years later, Zamora revisits the path he took, reflecting on his status as an undocumented person in the United States.[23]
Throughout "Unacccompanied" Zamora focuses on different aspects on his journey to the United States. Through the story Zamora refers to the border being more than just a border. Zamora also mentions how arriving to the United States changed his view on himself and how it affected his identity. Nearing the end of Unaccompanied Zamora shifted his focus to poems that tied themselves together. Zamora remembers El Salvador being separated and only having a memory of it. The poems written by Zamora tell the story of his undocumented journey and give the reader a feeling of what it was like crossing the border. Zamora frequently addresses history, borders, and memory in his poetry. “[Poetry] matters because there is a history of all the poets who have risked their lives [to write],” Zamora said in a 2014 interview with Paula Beete for the National Endowment for the Arts Art Works Blog. In my opinion, we in the US tend to forget that writing and the title of "being a poet" are linked to a lengthy tradition of individuals who have physically put their lives in danger and lost their lives in order to pen those lines.[24]