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Poet: Javier Zamora Reading and Book Signing

Javier Zamora, a Salvadoran-born poet and author of the book “Unaccompanied,” will read from his work at UCI. Zamora was born in La Herradura, El Salvador in 1990. His father fled El Salvador when he was a year old; and his mother when he was about to turn five. Both parents' migrations were caused by the US-funded Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992).

In 1999, Javier migrated through Guatemala, Mexico, and eventually the Sonoran Desert. After a coyote abandoned his group in Oaxaca, Javier managed to make it to Arizona with the aid of other migrants. His first full-length collection, Unaccompanied (CopperCanyon Press), explores how immigration and the civil war have impacted his family.

Zamora was a recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and the Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award for his work in the Undocupoets Campaign. Javier lives in Harlem, NY, where he’s working on a memoir and his second collection of poems, which address the current “immigration crisis.”