Poets & Art with Adela Najarro
Poet Adela Najarro was in residence with Letras Latinas and the Raclin Murphy Museum Art in March 2026 for the second event of “Poets & Art: Ekphrasis at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art,” a multi-year partnership between the Museum and the Institute for Latino Studies. Enjoy a reading of her poems and an exploration of poetry and the visual arts in conversation with one another.
Experience the Event
Presented by Institute for Latino Studies
How does the intersection of literary performance and visual arts foster a shared sense of heritage? Sustain your spiritual and intellectual vitality through this vibrant encounter with the verse and vision of poet Adela Najarro. Envision a future anchored in the stories that fuse cultural insight and bridge our past with the present moment through a profound dialogue of spirit and site.
Adela Najarro was the featured poet at the second event of “Poets & Art: Ekphrasis at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art,” a join initiative of the Institute for Latino Studies and the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. You can read more about Adelas’ time on campus here.
For more information on Letras Latinas at the Institute for Latino Studies, please visit the Letras Latinas website.
Meet the Poet: Adela Najarro
Adela Najarro is the author of four poetry collections: Split Geography, Twice Told Over, My Childrens, a chapbook that includes teaching resources, and Volcanic Interruptions, a chapbook that includes Janet Trenchard’s artwork. The Letras Latinas/ Red Hen Collaborative has selected Variations in Blue for publication in 2025.
The 2024 Int’l Latino Book Awards designated Volcanic Interruptions as an Honorable Mention in the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award category. The California Arts Council recognized her as an established artist for the Central California Region and appointed her as an Individual Artist Fellow.
Adela Najarro is a poet with a social consciousness who is working on a novel. Her extended family left Nicaragua and arrived in San Francisco during the 1940s; after the fall of the Somoza regime, the last of the family settled in the Los Angeles area. She serves on the board of directors for Círculo de poetas and Writers and works with the Latinx community nationwide, promoting the intersection of creative writing and social justice.
She holds a doctorate in literature and creative writing from Western Michigan University, as well as an M.F.A. from Vermont College, and is widely published in numerous anthologies and literary magazines.
Her poetry appears in the University of Arizona Press anthology The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry, and she has published poems in numerous journals, including Porter Gulch Review, Acentos Review, BorderSenses, Feminist Studies, Puerto del Sol, Nimrod International Journal of Poetry & Prose, Notre Dame Review, Blue Mesa Review, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere. She currently calls Santa Cruz, California, home.