Joshua Jennifer Espinoza (born December 17, 1987) is an American poet from

Riverside, California Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. As of the 2020 census, the city has a population of 314,998. It is the most populous city in th ...

. She is a Visiting Professor of English at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. Espinoza's works have been published in ''Poetry Magazine'', ''

PEN America PEN America (formerly PEN American Center), founded in 1922, and headquartered in New York City, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose goal is to raise awareness for the protection of free expression in the United States and worldwide th ...

'', ''Lambda Literary'', ''The Offing'', ''Shabby Doll House'', ''Electric Cereal'', ''Voicemail Poems,'' and

The Rumpus ''The Rumpus'' is an online literary magazine founded by Stephen Elliott (author), Stephen Elliott, and launched on January 20, 2009. The site features interviews, book reviews, essays, comics, and critiques of creative culture as well as origi ...

. Espinoza's work covers topics like

mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...

, coming out as a

transgender A transgender (often shortened to trans) person has a gender identity different from that typically associated with the sex they were sex assignment, assigned at birth. The opposite of ''transgender'' is ''cisgender'', which describes perso ...

woman, and universal themes like love, grief, anger, and

beauty Beauty is commonly described as a feature of objects that makes them pleasure, pleasurable to perceive. Such objects include landscapes, sunsets, humans and works of art. Beauty, art and taste are the main subjects of aesthetics, one of the fie ...

. Her poems often take a tender yet searing tone, yoking together personal experiences of loss with a sense of fullness underscored by abstract metaphors drawing from both urban and rural environments.

Bibliography

* ''i'm alive / it hurts / i love it''. Boost House. 2014 * ''THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS.'' Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016. * ''Outside Of The Body There Is Something Like Hope.'' Big Lucks Books. 2018. * ''I'm Alive. It Hurts. I Love It. (Second Edition)'' Big Lucks Books. 2019. * ''I Don't Want To Be Understood.'' 2024. Alice James Books.

References

External links

''THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS''
book review at goodreads.com

at upthestaircase.org
The shared experiences of poetry with Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
at thecreativeindependent.com 1987 births Living people American women poets American LGBTQ poets English-language poets American transgender women Writers from Riverside, California 21st-century American poets 21st-century American women writers American transgender writers Transgender poets {{US-poet-1980s-stub