Raul Palma
RAUL PALMA is the author of A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens (forthcoming from Dutton), and In This World of Ultraviolet Light (Indiana University Press).
He is a member of the fiction faculty at Ithaca College, and the Associate Dean of Faculty and New Initiatives in Ithaca College's School of Humanities and Sciences. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska, with a specialization in ethnic studies.
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His research interests include creative writing studies, with leanings toward topics in Latinx studies, women and gender studies, narrative ethics, and world building. In his classroom, craft and lore are sites of excavation. He nurtures the imagination through play to help students break open enclosed systems. More recently, he has turned his attention to decolonizing the syllabus, and he has presented on this work at Dartmouth's Leslie Center for the Arts, Ithaca College's Center for Faculty Excellence, and the Center for Cartoon Studies.
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His stories and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Chattahoochee Review, the Greensboro Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Smokelong Quarterly, and the Sonora Review. His very short fiction was included in Best Small Fictions 2018 (selected by Aimee Bender). Additionally, his work has been supported with fellowships and scholarships from the CubaOne Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Santa Fe Writer's Conference, the Sewanee Writer's Conference, and the Sundress Academy for the Arts.
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In the community, Palma has taught at Elmira Correctional through Cornell's Prison Education Program. He regularly provides workshops or readings through Ithaca's Community Arts Parternship, and every year, since 2020, he and his daughter, Olivia Zowie Palma, have participated in the Tompkins County Public Library Foundation's READATHON program—a marathon reading event that raises funds for the local library.
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Palma is Cuban American. He lived in Miami for twenty-five years and has also lived in Key West, Chicago, and Lincoln, NE. Currently, he resides in Ithaca, NY with his wife and daughter.
