A Conversation with Oliver Baez Bendorf
Listen in to an oral history conversation with award-winning poet Oliver Baez Bendorf, interviewed by writer and poet Sebastian Bostwick ’20 MFA, who at the time of the interview was a graduate student in the Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Notre Dame. Oliver and Sebastian discuss the challenges of experiencing and bearing witness to one’s own metamorphosis, the historic moment Oliver read his poetry at the White House, and the spiritual dimension of writing poetry that is both prayer and confession.
Experience the Episode
Presented by Institute for Latino Studies
Thursday, June 26, 2025 12:00 pm
Listen in to an oral history conversation with award-winning poet Oliver Baez Bendorf, interviewed by writer and poet Sebastian Bostwick ’20 MFA, who at the time of the interview was a graduate student in the Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Notre Dame. Oliver and Sebastian discuss the challenges of experiencing and bearing witness to one’s own metamorphosis, the historic moment Oliver read his poetry at the White House, and the spiritual dimension of writing poetry that is both prayer and confession.
For more information on Letras Latinas at the Institute for Latino Studies, please visit the Letras Latinas website.
Meet the Poet: Oliver Baez Bendorf
Oliver Baez Bendorf is the author of three books of poetry, including Consider the Rooster (Nightboat Books, 2024), which was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the CLMP Firecracker Award, and was named one of the best poetry collections of the year by Electric Literature and Lit Hub.
His previous books are Advantages of Being Evergreen (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2019), winner of the CSU Open Book Prize, and The Spectral Wilderness (Kent State University Press, 2015), selected by Mark Doty for the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. His chapbook The Gospel According to X was published by Seven Kitchens Press in 2019 as part of the Rane Arroyo Series.
His work has been published in Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Nation, BOMB, The Cincinnati Review, Poem-a-Day, New England Review, Orion, and in several anthologies, including The Best American Poetry, Latino Poetry: A Library of America Anthology, and Troubling the Line: Trans & Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. His poems and essays have been translated into Russian and Spanish, and his work in hybrid forms includes poetry comics and a self-published zine on gender-affirming surgery.
He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, CantoMundo, Vermont Studio Center, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. In 2020, he was awarded the Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award by the Publishing Triangle. He has taught poetry and creative writing at institutions including Kalamazoo College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Born in Iowa in 1987, he holds degrees from the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2025, facing political persecution in the United States, he fled the country and is currently living and writing in exile.
Meet the Poet: Sebastian Bostwick ’20 MFA
In both my professional and personal spheres, I’ve learned that you often receive what you’re willing to give. In my work, I give freely; I prioritize the opportunities, activities, and literature that not only promotes the growth of my students, colleagues, and community members, but also those that continuously push me toward the best version of myself.
As a poet, I strive to see beauty and awe in the grotesque or unaccepted, as those positions in society are woefully overlooked. My long term career goal is to share the splendors of creative writing with queer youth by any means—either directly through teaching and mentorship or by supporting publishers and organizations that aim to represent and honor the varied experiences we live as human beings.