Stephanie’s work is rooted in the crossroads of ritual, ancestry, identity, and environment.
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[Stephanie Adams-Santos] invokes history as a knowledge that can be felt, something with the potential to transform (and transform our perspectives) at the intersections of language and image, intimacy and violence, and grief and galvanization.
—Lo Kwa Mei-En, author of Yearling
Photo by Intisar Abioto
Stephanie Adams-Santos is a multidisciplinary Guatemalan-American writer and educator whose work spans poetry, prose, screenwriting, and hybrid genres. Her full-length poetry collection, Swarm Queen's Crown (Fathom Books, 2016) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, which celebrates excellence in LGBTQ voices. She is also the author of Total Memory (Finishing Line Press, 2016), Little Fugues (Sola Books, 2015) and the award-winning chapbook The Sundering (Poetry Society of America 2009), selected for a New York Chapbook Fellowship. Stephanie has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets, and was a finalist for a Corporeal Voices fellowship for Writers of Color. Her work has appeared in many print and online journals and magazines, including Guernica, The Boston Review, Orion Magazine and others.
Stephanie earned an MFA in Poetry at Columbia University School of the Arts, and a BA in English at Stanford University. She has taught poetry workshops at the Independent Publishing Resource Center, Literary Arts, Portland Community College, University of San Francisco, Reed College, Purchase University, Marylhurst, Portland Book Festival, NW Conference of Magic, and others. She is the founder of Tarot Obscuro and Ojo de la Selva Press.
Stephanie's work has been generously supported by fellowships from Oregon Literary Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Film Independent, as well as by grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council and Oregon Arts Commission.
She is currently a screenwriting fellow with Project Involve and the recipient of a 2019 Chaz Ebert Fellowship.
Stephanie earned an MFA in Poetry at Columbia University School of the Arts, and a BA in English at Stanford University. She has taught poetry workshops at the Independent Publishing Resource Center, Literary Arts, Portland Community College, University of San Francisco, Reed College, Purchase University, Marylhurst, Portland Book Festival, NW Conference of Magic, and others. She is the founder of Tarot Obscuro and Ojo de la Selva Press.
Stephanie's work has been generously supported by fellowships from Oregon Literary Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Film Independent, as well as by grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council and Oregon Arts Commission.
She is currently a screenwriting fellow with Project Involve and the recipient of a 2019 Chaz Ebert Fellowship.
...a distinct and bold new voice
— Film Independent / PR Newswire
[Her work has] energies of fierce need, searching and self-possession...peers deeply and thoughtfully into pain...There is a distinct, composed wildness in her voice. She is preoccupied with solitude and its effects on the body, and you can find her, in poems, scouring a landscape for what lives there, then reaching into it.
—Joanna Klink, author of Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy
What is Obscuro Beach?
Obscuro Beach is a place of Strange sightings & Poetical phenomena. A place of recurring dreams & childhood fantasies. An obscure place. A bizarro kind of place. It is born of the childhood beaches where I played out with my siblings elaborate and thrilling games of mystery, murder, and horrific wonderment—the unfolding shores of Manzanita, Cannon beach, Neah Bay. It's the tide of washed up things. Where la llorona floats along the edge of the mist at the hour of sleep. Where sorrow festers amorphously (and amorously), crowned by flies and gulls. It's a place where mystery and magic are allowed to dwell and deepen and Be. It is always & never, not-quite-here and yet—it's here, it's right where we are. It's the strange place within.
—SAS
Obscuro Beach is a place of Strange sightings & Poetical phenomena. A place of recurring dreams & childhood fantasies. An obscure place. A bizarro kind of place. It is born of the childhood beaches where I played out with my siblings elaborate and thrilling games of mystery, murder, and horrific wonderment—the unfolding shores of Manzanita, Cannon beach, Neah Bay. It's the tide of washed up things. Where la llorona floats along the edge of the mist at the hour of sleep. Where sorrow festers amorphously (and amorously), crowned by flies and gulls. It's a place where mystery and magic are allowed to dwell and deepen and Be. It is always & never, not-quite-here and yet—it's here, it's right where we are. It's the strange place within.
—SAS