Edwin Torres

Bio

EDWIN TORRES is a bilingual poet firmly rooted in the languages of both sight and sound. He is a native New Yorker and has worked as an award winning graphic designer in New York City for the past 20 years. With a background in performance art, his introduction to poetry was through the Nuyorican Poets Café, where he began reciting his poetry in 1991. He’s been awarded the Nuyorican Poets Café Fresh Poetry Award, and has received a year’s fellowship from The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art. Since 1993, Torres has traveled across the nation and overseas with a poetry collective called “Real Live Poetry.” With the group he has taught workshops and performed in Australia, at The Sidney Arts Festival, across England and Germany on a three-week tour, and all over the United States, from Allentown to Alaska. He also worked at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project for three years, giving workshops and curating a poetry series. His poems have been published in several literary journals, including New American Poets (Talisman Press), Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café (Henry Holt & Co.), and Verses That Hurt: Pleasure and Pain from the Poemfone Poets (St. Martin’s Press). He has appeared on radio and television (MTV’s “Spoken Word Unplugged,”and The Charlie Rose Show) and in the magazines Newsweek, Rolling Stone, New York Magazine, and High Times. He has three books of poetry: Is Hear Things People Haven’t Really Said, Lung Poetry, and SandHommeNomadNo, and his CD, Holy Kid, was recently released by Kill Rock Stars.