Santiago Acosta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University. He specializes in modern and contemporary Latin American literature and visual arts, which he examines through the lenses of cultural studies, political economy, and environmental theory. His book manuscript, We Are Like Oil: An Ecology of the Venezuelan Culture Boom, explores how literature and the visual arts interacted with the environmental shifts of the 1970s oil boom in Venezuela. He is also the co-editor of the volume Ecopoéticas y políticas ecológicas desde el Sur, currently under contract at Brill Academic Publishers. In 2021-23, he was the PRODiG Fellow at the State University of New York in Old Westbury, where he helped launch the institution’s new Environmental Studies degree.

Acosta is also an award-winning poet. His fourth and most recent collection, El próximo desierto (The Coming Desert), earned him the José Emilio Pacheco Literature Prize “Ciudad y Naturaleza,” awarded by the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) and the Museum of Environmental Sciences of the University of Guadalajara. In 2024, Spain’s Visor Libros released a collection of his selected poetry, titled La desesperanza (Hopelessness). He has received support from the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and was an invited poet at the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow. While in Caracas, he co-founded the poetry journal El Salmón, which won a National Book Award in 2010.

News and latest updates:

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It’s out! My poetry anthology, La desesperanza , has just been published in Spain by Visor Libros. Get it here or here .

It’s out! My poetry anthology, La desesperanza, has just been published in Spain by Visor Libros. Get it here or here.

My poem “The Policeman’s Son” just came out on Poetry Northwest , translated by Tiffany Troy and the Women in Translation Project.

My poem “The Policeman’s Son” just came out on Poetry Northwest, translated by Tiffany Troy and the Women in Translation Project.

On January 12, I was invited to participate in the Environmental Humanities Workshop at Stanford, focusing on “Transdisciplinary Efforts in the Face of Environmental Challenges.” In my talk, titled “Ecopoetry and the Critique of the Present,” I ad

On January 12, I was invited to participate in the Environmental Humanities Workshop at Stanford, focusing on “Transdisciplinary Efforts in the Face of Environmental Challenges.” In my talk, titled “Ecopoetry and the Critique of the Present,” I advocated for poetry as a powerful form of contemporary critique in the face of climate change, proposing a continuum where theory, research, and poetry mutually inform and sustain each other.

Ana Alenso’s edited book, titled Lo que la mina te da, la mina te quita / What The Mine Gives, The Mine Takes , has been published in Berlin by Bom Dia Books. The book features my poem “La selva de azogue” (Quicksilver Jungle) and brings together t

Ana Alenso’s edited book, titled Lo que la mina te da, la mina te quita / What The Mine Gives, The Mine Takes, has been published in Berlin by Bom Dia Books. The book features my poem “La selva de azogue” (Quicksilver Jungle) and brings together the creative work of artists and researchers focusing on the conflict surrounding the Arco Minero del Orinoco. Get your copy here.

I’ll be participating in three different panels at the upcoming congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), in Vancouver, between May 24-27: Political Ecologies in Latin American Poetry (May 25, 03:30-5:30 PM, Room 216); Latin Amer

I’ll be participating in three different panels at the upcoming congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), in Vancouver, between May 24-27: Political Ecologies in Latin American Poetry (May 25, 03:30-5:30 PM, Room 216); Latin American Image Forms: Impure Practices, Frames, and Media (May 27, 10:15-11:45 AM, Room 121); and Latin America and the Geological Turn: Inhuman Becomings and Earthly Memories (May 27, 5:15-6:45 PM, Room 223). See you there!

I’m delighted to have been invited to share my research on the cultural ecology of oil at the Neubauer Collegium’s symposium Fossil Capitalism in the Global South . The event will take place at the University of Chicago on May 5th.

I’m delighted to have been invited to share my research on the cultural ecology of oil at the Neubauer Collegium’s symposium Fossil Capitalism in the Global South. The event will take place at the University of Chicago on May 5th.