Desirée Alvarez is a painter and poet whose work speaks to a mythic human interaction with the natural world. Her work has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Willard L. Metcalf Award, three Artist Fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts, and a European Capital of Culture Award. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from Poets House, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Yaddo, and P.S. 122. Her first book of poems won the May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and will be published by Bauhan Publishing in April 2016.