MARÍA AUXILIADORA ÁLVAREZ was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1956 and has been a professor emerita at Miami University, Ohio, since 2023. Growing up in different countries due to her father's diplomatic career, she settled in the United States in 1996, where she received a master's degree and doctorate in Spanish literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research areas include mystical/contemporary poetry; pre-Columbian/colonial cultures; and women, cultural, and interdisciplinary studies. She has published several critical articles in literary journals, two essay collections, and fourteen volumes of poetry.