Oliver Baez Bendorf

Oliver Baez Bendorf is the author of three books of poetry, including Consider the Rooster (Nightboat Books, 2024), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award, and the Lambda Award for Transgender Poetry, and was named one of the best poetry collections of the year by Electric Literature and Lit Hub.

His work has appeared in leading journals such as Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, and The Nation, and in major anthologies including The Best American Poetry and Latino Poetry: A Library of America Anthology. His poems and essays have been translated into Russian and Spanish, and his work in hybrid forms includes poetry comics and a self-published zine on gender-affirming surgery.

Born in Iowa in 1987, he holds degrees from the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2025, facing political persecution in the United States, he chose exile and is currently living, writing, drawing, and teaching somewhere on Earth where a river meets the sea.

website: https://www.oliverbaezbendorf.com/