Profile

Alena Coleman holds a B.A. (summa cum laude) from the University of Notre Dame, where she double majored in Spanish and English and minored in Education, Schooling, and Society. Her honors thesis received the award for Outstanding Thesis from the Department of English and the Wright, Flint-Hamilton & Mason Award for Outstanding Research related to the African Diaspora. Her capstone paper for the Department of Spanish entitled “Materialidad y mercantilización: Ediciones Vigía, Morejón y El río de Martín Pérez y otros poemas” was published in Tenso Diagonal. After graduation, she received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Uruguay where she developed five arts-based foreign language workshops on poetry writing, theatre, and folk music at the secondary and tertiary levels. She has worked with local arts organizations, such as the South Bend Civic Theatre and Festival Livrera, to advocate for access to quality arts education. Her poetry and prose have most recently appeared in Hellbender Magazine, Sky Island Journal, and Notre Dame Magazine. As a doctoral student, her research explores the material connection between artisanal poetry books, commodity, and the writing of women and Afro-Latinx persons.