Lytton Regalado, Alexandra

Alexandra Lytton Regalado is the author of the poetry collection Matria, which won the St. Lawrence Book Award. She is co-director of Editorial Kalina and editor of Puntos de Fuga/Vanishing Points (Editorial Kalina, 2017), a bilingual anthology of contemporary Salvadoran prose. She lives in Miami and San Salvador, El Salvador. When COVID-19 broke out and the United States closed the border to travel, Lytton Regalado was separated from her family in El Salvador. Written entirely during the lockdown, the poems in Relinquenda (Beacon Press) are a meditation on illness, the passing of her father, and the renewed significance of community. The central part of the collection focuses on her father during his six-year struggle with cancer and explores how it might serve as a mirror and warning. Other poems address what it means for daughters, mothers, and wives to care for one another as reflected in her relationships with the men in her life. Situated in the tropical landscapes of Miami and El Salvador, the poems also negotiate the meaning of home, reflecting on immigration and the ties between the U.S. and El Salvador 30 years after her birth country’s decadelong civil war.