About

Bessy Reyna is the author of two bilingual books of poetry, The Battlefield of Your Body (Hill-Stead Museum, 2005) andMemoirs of the Unfaithful Lover/ Memorias de la amante infiel (tunAstral, A.C., 2010, Toluca Mexico). A chapbook of her poems, She Remembers, was published by Andrew Mountain Press in 1997. Her Spanish language writing, published in Latin America, includes a poetry chapbook, Terrarium (Instrucción Programada de México, 1975), and a collection of short stories, Ab Ovo (Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Panama, 1977). Her poetry can be found in numerous anthologies, includingEl Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry, In Other Words: Literature by Latinas of the United States, The Arc of Love: Lesbian Poems and The Wild Good; CT Literary Anthology, 2021 and 2022. She is a contributor to  Gathered Light: The Poetry of Joni Mitchell’s Songs (Lisa and John Sornberger, Eds. 2013) and Penelope: Antologia de Cuentistas Centroamricanas (CD and edited by Consuelo Meza Vasquez, Ed.)

Born in Cuba and raised in Panama, Bessy is a graduate of Mt Holyoke College (BA Magna Cum  Laude) and earned her Masters and Law degrees from the University of Connecticut. For nine years she was a monthly opinion columnist for The Hartford Courant as well as a frequent contributor to Northeast, the Sunday magazine of the Hartford Courant. For several years, she conducted radio interviews with poets appearing at Hill-Stead Museum’s renowned Sunken Garden Poetry Festival in Farmington, CT. and wrote an arts-and-culture page for the Hispanic newspaper Identidad Latina and  for www.CTLatinoNews.com. A former Master Teaching Artist for the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, she is a frequent lecturer and guest artist at colleges, libraries and museums. She has performed her poetry internationally; taught writing workshops in many venues; and served as a judge for poetry competitions, including the Connecticut Book Award for Poetry and on the boards of several cultural institutions in Connecticut.  She was selected as Bolton’s inaugural poet laureate in 2021 and reappointed in 2023.