Rachelle Escamilla is a Chicana poet from the Central Coast of California. She is the author of three books of poetry: Imaginary Animal (Willow Books, 2015, 2022) and Me Drawing a Picture of Me[n] (Willow Books, 2019) and Space Junk from the Heavenly Palace (Nomadic Press 2023).  Rachelle is the founder of a number of organizations and literary programs including: The Poets and Writers Coalition and Legacy of Poetry Day at San Jose State University; The English-language Center for Creative Writing at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China; Literature of the Margins at the United States Consulate of Guangzhou, China and the Latinx Poetix Symposium at California State University Monterey Bay.

From 2015-2020 She was the producer and host of the longest running poetry radio show in the US, Out of Our Minds on KKUP Cupertino 91.5 FM. In 2018 she was a visiting scholar at the Library of Congress, Hispanic Division where she conducted research around her grandfather’s 1969 testimony for the fair treatment of migrant laborers in California. While at the Library of Congress, Ms. Escamilla recorded her poems for the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape: Palabra and published an article, Searching for my Family with the Library of Congress. Rachelle’s award-winning first collection of poems, Imaginary Animal is slated to become an off-Broadway play with director Katherine Wilkinson and scheduled to show (hiatus due to Covid) at Access Theater in New York. Rachelle teaches Contemporary Chicana Poetry, Multicultural Poetry, Latinx Creative Writing, and Creative Writing in Monterey.  She also manages Social Media and Marketing for Philip Glass Days and Nights Festival and works as a model and actress. You can find the archive for her radio show and any upcoming podcasts at her SoundCloud at https://m.soundcloud.com/rachelle-escamilla