About Me

Alejandro Escudé’s first book of poems, "My Earthbound Eye," was published in September 2013 upon winning the 2012 Sacramento Poetry Center Award. He received a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis, where he was taught by such notable poets as Gary Snyder and Sandra McPherson. Alejandro works as an English teacher, having taught in a variety of school systems at the secondary level for over fifteen years. Originally from Córdoba, Argentina, he immigrated to California many years ago at the age of six. A new book, “The Book of the Unclaimed Dead,” published by Main Street Rag Press, is now available on the MSR website. Alejandro is a single dad of two wonderful kids and lives in Los Angeles with his dog, a feisty yet lovable Jack Russell named Jake.

I am a proudly anti-academia writer, so I don't write PhD dissertations masquerading as poetry or fiction. If you combine Hemingway, Williams, Ashbery, Plath, and Bukowski, you would get close to my aesthetic. I am often inspired by current events, but I also write about family, my city (Los Angeles), and the more subtle hypocrisies evident in Western society and the human race as a whole. You might see a trace misanthropy in my work, but it's not as pessimistic as it reads; I'm an unfiltered writer, so I do exaggerate for effect at times. Writing is a habit that helps me cope with life, and its been a habit since I was about fourteen, though I do believe that highly sensitive people (a personality type I identify with strongly) understand themselves to be artists before they are even able to write.