Educator. Writer. Editor.

Sonya Lara is a biracial Mexican American writer. She received her BA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MFA in Poetry from Virginia Tech.

Her work appeared or is forthcoming in The Maine Review, Frontier, Shenandoah, Ninth Letter, AGNI, The Los Angeles Review, The Acentos Review, and elsewhere.

She was accepted for the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop with Leila Chatti, the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, the Hambidge Creative Residency Program, the Peter Bullough Foundation Residency, the Blue Mountain Center Residency, the Good Hart Artist Residency, and the Shenandoah National Park Artist-in-Residence Residency.

Sonya is the current Wisconsin’s Own Library Poet in Residence Fellow and a recipient of the Studios Fellowship through The Studios at MASS MoCA. Additionally, she was a finalist for the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Poetry Fellowship, the Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship, and the Outpost Residency Fellowship, and was shortlisted for The Eavan Boland Emerging Poet Award and runner-up in Shenandoah’s Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets.

She has extensive experience teaching writing at the college level at Virginia Tech via both full-semester introductory courses in creative writing and composition, and through shorter term workshops she created in Prose Poetry, Flash Creative Nonfiction, and the Lyrical Impulse. She’s also taught writing courses through Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, All Write through Virginia Tech, and The Loft Literary Center. Additionally, she’s worked with students in composition courses through the University of Texas at Austin.

Previously, she was the Poetry Editor for Minerva Rising Press, an Editor-at-Large for Cleaver Magazine, the Managing Editor for The New River, the Managing Editor of the minnesota review, and an Associate Fiction Editor for The Madison Review. Additionally, she has served as a juror for contests and residencies, such as the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Peter Bullough Foundation Residency, and the Blue Mountain Center Residency.