Elisabet Velasquez

Elisabet Velasquez is a Boricua poet and writer from Bushwick, Brooklyn, whose work spans magazines and literary anthologies. Her debut, When We Make It, is a novel in verse centered on Sarai, a first-generation Puerto Rican girl growing up in a rapidly changing Brooklyn neighborhood. Through Sarai's questions, the book examines family, Nuyorican identity, inequality, humor and the varied meanings of success. Dial Books published the hardcover in 2021. The novel was selected for YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults, named a commended title for the Américas Award and included in the ALA Rise project. Velasquez's poetry and prose have appeared in Muzzle Magazine, Longreads, Latina Magazine and Martín Espada's anthology What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump. She was also a 2017 Poets House fellow and won the 2017 Button Poetry Video Contest.