Nina C. Peláez
is a poet, essayist, educator, and cultural producer based in Maui, Hawaiʻi.
An adoptee born in Las Vegas, NV and raised in Brooklyn, NY she holds an MFA from Bennington College and is Associate Director of The Merwin Conservancy, an arts and ecology organization that cares for the home and garden of poet W.S. Merwin. An emerging writer, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Narrative, Swamp Pink, Electric Literature, The Baltimore Review, Rattle, Pleiades, RHINO, Radar, Cider Press Review, and Fairy Tale Review. She was recently awarded The Coniston Prize for Poetry, was named a 2024 AWP Writer to Writer mentee, a Scotti Merrill Award for Emerging Writers semifinalist, and was awarded a Key West Literary Seminars Workshop Fellowship. She is a Tin House alum and will be attending a residency at Yaddo in Spring 2025. She is working on the manuscript for her first poetry collection
Writing
Recent work appearing or forthcoming in Narrative, Swamp Pink, Electric Literature, Rattle, Radar, The Baltimore Review, Pleiades, RHINO, Cider Press Review, & Fairy Tale Review.
Work
Recognition
Features
Education
Associate Director for Story & Experience at The Merwin Conservancy, the former home & garden of writer W.S. Merwin.
Previously Associate Director for Learning & Interpretation at the Smith College Museum of Art, Curator of Programs & Interpretation at the Williams College Museum of Art, and Kress Interpretive Fellow at the High Museum of Art.
Winner of The Coniston Prize for Poetry, Yaddo Residency, Tin House Workshop, Key West Literary Seminars Fellowship Award, Scotti Merrill Award for Emerging Writers Semi-Finalist, Edith Wharton Writers-in-Residence Finalist, AWP Writer to Writer Mentee, Martha Boschen Porter Fund Award, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council of the Northern Berkshires Grant Recipient, MASS MoCA’s Assets for Artists New North Adams Project, Myong Cha Son Poetry Prize, John Russell Hayes Poetry Prize, Morrell-Potter Stipend in Creative Writing.
Brooklyn Poets Poet of the Week Feature (Forthcoming January 2025)
“To Begin This Week’s Conversation… Poets Nina C. Peláez & Millicent Borges Accardi in Conversation” in the AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) The Writer’s Notebook
MFA in Poetry, Bennington Writing Seminars, 2024
MA in Art History, Williams College, 2014
BA in Art History & English Literature, Swarthmore College, 2011