Claudia Castro Luna is Washington State Poet Laureate (2018-2020) and served as Seattle’s first Civic Poet (2015-2017). She is the author of Killing Marías (Two Sylvias Press) and This City, (Floating Bridge Press), a Hedgebrook and VONA alumna, a 2014 Jack Straw fellow, the recipient of a King County 4Culture grant and an individual artist grant from Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture. Born in El Salvador she came to the United States in 1981. She has an MA in Urban Planning, a teaching certificate and an MFA in poetry. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, La Bloga, City Arts and Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art, among others. Her non-fiction work can be read in the anthologies, The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the US, Northwestern University Press; Vanishing Points: Contemporary Salvadoran Narrative, Kalina Eds; and in This Is The Place: Women Writing About Home, Seal Press. Claudia Castro Luna was named 2018-2020 WA State Poet Laureate.