Desirée Alvarez is the author of Raft of Flame, winner of the 2020 Lake Merritt Poetry Prize from Omnidawn, and Devil’s Paintbrush, which received the 2015 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. She has published in journals including Boston Review, Fence Magazine, and Poetry Magazine, along with many anthologies. Alvarez is also a painter exhibiting in galleries and museums nationally and internationally, and she lives in New York City, where she teaches at New York City College of Technology and The Juilliard School.