Amy Alvarez
Amy Alvarez, associate professor of practice in the Messina College at Boston College, is the winner of the inaugural CARICON Prize for Poetry by the CARICON Foundation for her 2024 collection of poems, “Makeshift Alter.” Exploring the cultural, and spiritual experiences of Afro-Caribbean and African Americans, Alvarez takes her readers on a journey of self-discovery that weaves themes of environment, family and migration.
The CARICON Prize was launched this year as an annual award honoring works by Caribbean authors and those across the diaspora in multiple genres such as poetry, children’s literature, young adult novels and fiction. It is given to authors who not only represent these cultures but explore through storytelling the complexity of the Caribbean identity and experience.
Alvarez’s work was also recognized with a 2025 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Alvarez was born in New York to Jamaican and Puerto Rican parents. Growing up in a multicultural household allowed Alvarez to write many pieces reflecting on the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender identities, system injustice and growing up as a multicultural American.
Throughout her career Alvarez has been awarded fellowships from CantoMundo, Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Macondo, the Virginia Creative Arts Center and the Furious Flower Center for Black poetry as a result of her powerful storytelling that captures her own experiences as an Afro-Carribean and Afro-American. Alvarez’s work has also been featured in “Ploughshares,” “The Missouri Review,” “Poetry Foundation,” “Crazyhorse” and many other places. As a result of this she was also inducted as an Affrilachian Poet in 2022.
Among her many other accomplishments Alvarez was also co-editor of “Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology” (2023) a collection that brings together creative works to showcase the perspectives of vulnerable populations as they were affected by COVID-19 in 2020 before the vaccine was released.
She is the senior poetry editor at “Harbow Review” and a part of the Latinx Caucus Leadership team in the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. As an educator, Alvarez teaches writing and literature courses at Messina College with a heavy focus on race, ethnicity, regionality and social equity. Throughout her time as an educator and an author, Alvarez has highlighted her own experiences, bringing awareness to what the lives of many other multicultural people experience on a day-to-day basis.
As she continues to write pieces and educate on these topics, Alvarez is an inspiration for many people like her to express themselves and bring awareness to their own lives in experiences through a creative outlet such as writing. Alvarez will be honored in June 2026 in Toronto at the annual CARICON literary conference.
