Nina Alvarez's Writing Journey and Achievements

Major Recognition & Residencies

  • Recipient of 18-month "Creatives Rebuild New York" grant (2022-2024) for work as a writer and culture creator

  • Fiction Residency at Vermont Studio Center (2011, 2025)

  • Won Writers & Books' Big Pencil Award for teaching young writers (2014)

  • Won Shields Mcilwaine Award for Best Poem, University at Albany (1999)

Published Works

Recent Projects (2023-2024)

  • Currently writing "Legends of the Lost" at ninaalvarezwrites.substack.com

  • Created WKOZ Camp Cosmographia Radio (hybrid fiction/teaching podcast)

  • Conducted and published research on the Keuka Lake Bluff Point Ruins (2021)

  • Published "The Lost Legacy of Lizzie Scoville" in Laurel County Historical Society blog (2024)

Literary Publications

  • Hybrid/Creative Nonfiction

    • "Eighth Grade Bio" in Split Lip Magazine (2015) - Nominated for Sundress Publications "Best of the Net"

    • "The Question Is What To Do About The Question" in The Sonder Review (2015)

    • "Copywriting For Your Business Blog" in Prick of the Spindle (2015)

    • "Honesty and Orientation: A Review of Proxies" in Tupelo Quarterly (2017)

    • "Water of Life" profile in 55+ Magazine (2016)

    • "No Self at the Dinner Party" in The Finger (2012)

  • Fiction

    • "The Dancing Man" in Danse Macabre (2011)

    • "Faithless" and "AC/DC" in Dark Reveries Magazine (2007)

    • "Gravity is Weak" in 21 Stars Review (2007)

    • "Pee" in Swill (2007)

    • "If There is No One to Listen..." in Twisted Tongue Magazine (2007)

  • Poetry

    • "Death and the Maiden" in Danse Macabre (2011)

    • "October" in Electric Velocipede (2009)

    • "bees" in Grasslimb Journal (2008)

    • "Mary, Mary" and "Nietzsche" in Contemporary Rhyme (2007)

    • "The Shore" in Teen Magazine (1995) - First published work

Dramatic Works

  • "Type Writer" - Winner in Geva 2 Pages/2 Voices Festival (2015)

  • "The Life of Leo Wool" - Produced at East End Theatre (2013)

  • "A History of Bifurcations" - Produced at 24-Hour Plays (2013)

  • "The Battle Cry of Frieda" - Produced at 24-Hour Plays (2014)

Academic Writing

  • Master's thesis "Apocalypse is Genesis: Homi Bhabha and the Third Space of South African Culture" (2001)

    • Combined creative nonfiction, memoir, and criticism to explore black South African literature

    • Written after semester at University of Cape Town

Editorial Projects

  • Created Follow Your Bliss magazine (2010) with Sandy Farnan and Raquel Pidal

  • Founded NinaAlvarez.net (2007) - Poetry website with over 500,000 views as of 2025

This compilation represents over 25 years of published work across multiple genres, demonstrating versatility in creative writing, academic work, and dramatic arts.

My Life as a Writer & Culture Creator

My poetry, short story, novel-in-progress, plays, and hybrid work, and reviews have been published in many journals and magazines including Tupelo Quarterly, Prick of the Spindle, Split Lip, and Danse Macabre. I've been a featured reader at many literary events, a fiction resident at Vermont Studio Center, have had my play "The Life of Leo Wool" produced, and many of my one act plays have been staged. 

I received my BA in English in 1999 with a concentration in creative writing, and my MA in English in 2003 with a concentration in literary theory. Both degrees were from the University at Albany, where I also won the Shields McIlwaine award for best poem.

After spending a semester of my master's degree study abroad at the University of Cape Town in 2001, I wrote my master’s thesis “Apocalypse is Genesis: Homi Bhabha and the Third Space of South African Culture,” combining creative nonfiction, interview, memoir, and criticism to explore black South African literature and culture through the lenses of post-colonialism and intersubjectivity.

I think I've always been interested in making art that explores the personal in the public, the intersubjective in what we otherwise see as psychological separation, the way that the sublime exists on the edges of the mundane, and the way that we can be many things at once. This may be influenced by being half Puerto Rican and half white, growing up with that sense of not quite fitting in either space. But I also think it comes from being a deep empath and not always knowing where I end and others begin. 

It also led to some of my best art and to some of the richest human experiences I've had. 

As a Culture Creator

All my work incorporates these multiplicities across planes of being and knowing mentioned above. And when I publish the work of others, it's because I see this psychological and energetic dynamism there too. That is why I created my press, Cosmographia Books, literally named after the historical cosmographia, an atlas and a gazetteer containing the geographical makeup, social statistics, and physical features of a region. 

"In 2015, Nina Alvarez founded a press that would seek to embody that spirit of multidimensional mapping. Since then, Cosmographia Books has published a diverse array of titles that explore the individual's relationship to self, soul, love, work, society, and history."

This technical and metaphysical eye for multidimensional mapping has been with me as I've created and taught dozens of writing workshops, guided artists through their own creative journeys, taken on large and small publishing projects, learned how to do energetic healing for myself and others, and am even learning how to encode my art with energetic activations.