Nina C. Peláez is a poet, essayist, artist, educator & cultural producer based in Maui, HI.

Her writing often explores themes of adoption, ecology, diaspora, displacement, transformation, grief, and resilience. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Narrative, Electric Literature, Pleiades, Rattle, RHINO, Swamp Pink, and elsewhere.

“Intimate and raw reflections on loss and the body’s haunting memory unfold through poems that speak directly to the reader’s most vulnerable places. These poems explore the body’s terrain, caught between emptiness and possibility—between what we hold and what we surrender…this poet reveals the fragile connections between the self and the world, between absence and desire. Here, past wounds remain tender, yet the speaker traces each scar with care, finding beauty in the hollow spaces they leave behind.”

— January Gill O’Neil, Contest Judge for The Coniston Prize

Recently

  • Read my exchange with poet and AWP mentor Millicent Borges Accardi here

  • “After the Abortion” appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Pleiades Magazine.

  • I am so excited to be in residence at Yaddo in Spring 2025.

  • Read the winning group of poems here and what contest judge January Gil O’Neil had to say about my work here.

  • This incredible support will allow me to attend the 2025 workshop.

  • I will be attending the 2024 Autumn Workshop

  • This annual award, administered by the Key West Literary Seminars recognizes emerging poets.

  • Read the poem here.

  • Awarded by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, I was paired with mentor Millicent Borges Accardi.

  • Read the poem here.