Born in Los Ángeles, California, Yaccaira Salvatierra is a poet, translator, and dedicated educator teaching for over 20 years while raising her two sons as a single parent. She earned her BA at the University of California at Santa Cruz, an MA at San José State University, and an MFA at Randolph College. She received the Dorrit Sibley Award for Poetry and the Puerto del Sol Poetry Prize. She has been awarded the Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship as a fellow at the Community of Writers Workshop, and scholarships for the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Translator’s Conference, and Macondo. She is an organizer for the San Francisco International Flor y Canto Literary Festival and lives in Oakland, CA, where she teaches literacy and poetry to youth.