Nina C. Peláez

is a poet, essayist, educator, and cultural producer based in Maui, Hawaiʻi.

An adoptee born in Las Vegas, NV and raised in Brooklyn, NY she holds an MFA from Bennington College and is Associate Director of The Merwin Conservancy, an arts and ecology organization that cares for the home and garden of poet W.S. Merwin. A Best New Poets and Best of the Net nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlantic, Iowa Review, Narrative, Rattle, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Electric Literature, Willow Springs, Waxwing, diode, Pleiades, Swamp Pink, The Baltimore Review, RHINO, Radar, Cider Press Review, wildness, diode, Shō Poetry Journal, Verse Daily, Brooklyn Poets, Only Poems, & The Fairy Tale Review, among other journals. She was recently awarded the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association/ Gwenn A. Nussbaum Scholarship, A Shirley Holden Helberg Grant from the National League of American Pen Women, a Barbara Deming Memorial Scholarship, and the Coniston Prize by Radar Poetry, judged by January Gill O’Neil. She has been supported by workshops, fellowships, and residencies through Tin House, Yaddo, Tupelo Press, Key West Literary Seminars, and the Hudson Valley Writers Center. She is a mentor in the Adroit Journal Summer Program, a Bennington Writing Seminars Alumni Fellow, and a 2025-2026 Tin House Reading Fellow.

Why poetry?

I’m drawn to poetry’s intrinsic engagement with fragment and fracture. The break of the line, the silences and blank spaces inherent to a poem's form, feel as integral to the poem as the words that are there. For me, poetry has served as a way of making meaning from rupture, a means of holding what’s missing and writing into the gaps in language and memory—an attempt to narrate the untraceable, to grieve what has no name.

Read my feature with Only Poems

Recent work appearing or forthcoming in The Atlantic, The Poetry Foundation, Iowa Review, Narrative, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Swamp Pink, Poetry Northwest, Electric Literature, Willow Springs, diode, Waxwing, Pleiades, RHINO, Radar, Cider Press Review, wildness, Shō Poetry Journal, The Baltimore Review, Verse Daily, Brooklyn Poets, Only Poems, Eucalyptus Literature, and Fairy Tale Review.

Writing

Associate Director for Story & Experience at The Merwin Conservancy, the former home & garden of writer W.S. Merwin. She is also a mentor for The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, where she works with high school students. In June 2025, she will also be a Bennington College Alumni Teaching Fellow. She is a 2025-2025 Tin House Reading Fellow.

Previously Associate Director for Learning & Interpretation at the Smith College Museum of Art, Curator of Programs & Interpretation at the Williams College Museum of Art, and Kress Interpretive Fellow at the High Museum of Art.

Work & Teaching

Best New Poets Nominee, Best of the Net Nominee, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Awardee, Prairie Schooner’s Glenna Luschei Award, Walt Whitman Birthplace Association/ Gwenn A. Nusbaum “Poets to Come” Scholarship Winner, The Shirley Holden Helberg Grant from the National League of American Pen Women, Winner of The Coniston Prize for Poetry, Tin House Reading Fellow, Yaddo Residency, Tin House Workshop, Key West Literary Seminars Fellowship Award, Tupelo Press Manuscript Conference Scholarship, Hudson Valley Writers Center Scholarship, Runner-Up of the Sita Martin Prize, Finalist for the Mānoa Journal Poetry Prize, The Adroit Journal’s Gregory Djanikian Scholar Commended List, Disquiet Prize Shortlist, Scotti Merrill Award for Emerging Writers Semi-Finalist, Edith Wharton Writers-in-Residence Finalist, AWP Writer to Writer Mentee, Martha Boschen Porter Fund Award, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council of the Northern Berkshires Grant Recipient, MASS MoCA’s Assets for Artists New North Adams Project, Myong Cha Son Poetry Prize, John Russell Hayes Poetry Prize, Morrell-Potter Stipend in Creative Writing