Rosa Alcalá received her MFA from Brown University and her Ph.D. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. In 2003, Some Maritime Disasters This Century was published as a limited edition chapbook by Belladonna/Boog Books (New York). Alcalá has translated Cecilia Vicuña's El Templo (Situations Press, 2001 ) and Cloud-net (Art in General, 1999). Her translation of Vicuña's essay-poem, "Ubixic del Decir, 'Its Being Said': A Reading of a Reading of the Popol Vuh," was published in With Their Hands and Their Eyes: Maya Textiles, Mirrors of a Worldview, Etnografish Museum (Belgium, 2003). Alcala's translation of Bestiary: The Selected Poems of Lourdes Vázquez was published by Bilingual Press in 2004. Her poems and translations have also been published widely in a variety of literary journals, including the Kenyon Review, Bombay Gin, and Mandorla. She has held artist residencies and has given papers and readings in the U.S., Spain, Cuba, and Scotland.