Luisa Igloria


Luisa A. Igloria is a Filipina American poet and author of various award-winning collections, and is the most recent Poet Laureate of Virginia.

Early life and education

Luisa Aguilar Igloria was born in 1961 in Baguio, Philippines. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in humanities, graduating cum laude with a major in comparative literature, a minor in English, and a cognate in philosophy from the University of the Philippines Baguio in 1980. She then obtained her Master of Arts in literature at Ateneo de Manila University in 1988, where she was a Robert Southwell Fellow. Igloria completed her Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing at University of Illinois at Chicago in July 1995, where she was a Fulbright Fellow.

Career

Originally from Baguio City, Philippines, Luisa A. Igloria is the author of 16 full-length books and 5 chapbooks. She is a tenured professor of creative writing and English, and from 2009-2015 was director of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University.
In the Spring Term 2018, Igloria was the inaugural Glasgow Visiting Writer in Residence at Washington & Lee University. She was a visiting humanities scholar in 1996 at the Center for Philippine Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She taught briefly at De La Salle University where she became the graduate programs coordinator and senior associate for poetry at the Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center at De La Salle University. While in Chicago, she was an active member of PINTIG, a Filipino-American cultural and theatre group, where she served in PINTIG's cultural and education committee.
Igloria's work has appeared or been accepted in numerous anthologies and journals including New England Review, The Common, Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, Orion Magazine, The Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Poetry East, Natural Bridge, Umbrella, Sweet, qarrtsiluni, poemeleon, Smartish Pace, Rattle, The North American Review, Bellingham Review, Shearsman, PRISM International, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Asian Pacific American Journal, and TriQuarterly, among others. Her work is included in the very first electronic anthology of Women's Poetry Fire On Her Tongue, Language for a New Century, ed. Tina Chang, Ravi Shankar, and Nathalie Handal, and Letters to the World: Poems from the Wom-po Listserv], ed. by Moira Richards, Rosemary Starace, and Lesley Wheeler. She edited the anthology Not Home, But Here: Writing from the Filipino Diaspora ; and more recently, the anthology Of Color: Poets' Ways of Making.
In July, 2020, the governor of Virginia announced that Igloria had been appointed as the poet laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Personal life

Luisa Aguilar Igloria is married to Ruben V. Igloria, who is from Chicago. They have four daughters: Jennifer Patricia A. Cariño, Julia Katrina A. Parlette-Cariño, Josephine Anne A. Cariño, and Gabriela Aurora Igloria.

Awards

In July 2020, then Governor Ralph Northam appointed Luisa A. Igloria the 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia ; she is the 4th poet of color to receive this distinction. The Academy of American Poets awarded her 1 of 23 Poet Laureate Fellowships in 2021. She is highly decorated for her expanse of work: Luisa is an eleven-time recipient of the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in three genres ; the Palanca award is the Philippines' highest literary distinction. In 1996 she became the first Filipina woman of letters installed in the Palanca Literary Hall of Fame. She is also the recipient of the 1988 Black Warrior Literary Award from the literary magazine of the University of Alabama; the Charles Goodnow Endowed Award for Creative Writing from the Chicago Bar Association in 1993 and 1995; the 1998 Illinois Arts Council Literary Award and the George Kent Prize for Poetry.
Her awards include the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition Prize for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts, Southern Illinois University Press, 2020; the 2018 Center for the Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Prize for What is Left of Wings, I Ask; the 2015 Resurgence Prize for Ecopoetry] ; the 2014 May Swenson Poetry Prize from Utah State University Press for Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser; the 2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry from the University of Notre Dame Press; the 2007 49th Parallel Prize in Poetry from Bellingham Review; the 2007 James Hearst Poetry Prize ; the 2006 National Writers Union Poetry Prize ; the 2006 Stephen Dunn Award for Poetry; the first Sylvia Clare Brown Fellowship, Ragdale Foundation ; Finalist for the 2005 George Bogin Memorial Award for Poetry ; the 2005 Richard Lemon Poetry Fellowship to the Napa Valley Writers Conference; First Prize in the 2004 Fugue poetry contest ; Finalist in the 2003 Larry Levis Editors Prize for Poetry from The Missouri Review; Finalist in the 2003 Dorset Prize for Poetry ; a 2003 partial fellowship to the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg; three Pushcart Prize nominations and the 1998 George Kent Award for Poetry.

Books and publications

  • Since November 20, 2010, Luisa has been writing a poem a day as part of her daily writing practice.
  • Other works are listed through her website and in various online publications.
Books:
  • Cordillera Tales ; 1991 National Book Award
  • Cartography ; 1993 National Book Award for Poetry
  • Encanto ; 1994 National Book Award for Poetry
  • In the Garden of the Three Islands
  • Blood Sacrifice ; 1998 National Book Award for Poetry
  • Songs for the Beginning of the Millennium ; Finalist, 1998 National Book Award for Poetry
  • Turnings: Writing on Women's Transformations, co-edited with Renee Olander
  • Not Home, But Here: Writing from the Filipino Diaspora, as central editor
  • Trill and Mordent ; Runner-up, 2004 Editions Prize
  • Juan Luna's Revolver; 2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry
  • The Saints of Streets
  • Night Willow
  • Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser Of Color: Poets' Ways of Making
  • The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis Caulbearer
Chapbooks:
  • Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass
  • Check & Balance
  • Haori : Political Pilipinx Poetry, vol. 3; ed. Luisa A. Igloria
  • ''What is Left of Wings, I Ask''