Natalie Catasús
class of 2015
about
Born and raised in Miami, Natalie Catasús is a poet, scholar, and educator whose work engages issues of place, diaspora, and identity. She received a dual-degree in Visual & Critical Studies (M.A.) and Writing (M.F.A.) from CCA, where she served as Managing Editor and Art Director of Eleven Eleven Journal of Literature and Art, and collaborated on projects such as doubleBread's "Pop-Up Readings" and the poetry installation "an other permanence," installed in the Writers' Studio garden and led by Writing faculty member Denise Newman. Natalie received her B.A. in Literature and Spanish from New College of Florida, where she developed a comparative interdisciplinary honors thesis and short film on the subject of political displacement and intergenerational memory. She founded and managed the Oyster Kiln Literary Magazine from 2009–2012.
Natalie is also a certified copyeditor and has experience in nonprofit communications and grant-writing from her time with Voice of Witness, an SF-based organization that advances human rights by amplifying the voices of people impacted by injustice. She also worked for several years as a college writing tutor and writing center administrator.
Currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Comparative Literature, her research focuses on Caribbean literature and visual culture, with a special emphasis on Cuba and its diaspora. Her interests also include Latin American and Latinx literature, performance studies, postcolonial and decolonial theory, feminist and queer theory, and trauma and memory studies.
Natalie's critical writing has been featured in the Smithsonian Learning Lab's "Cuban Balseros: Using Art and Artifact to Explore an American Immigration Story," and her pedagogical work on Caribbean landscapes appears in the National Humanities Center's "Humanities in Class Digital Library." Her poetry and other writings appear or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, VOLT, Art Practical, Jai-Alai Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, and sx salon. Her recent chapbook, Flight, is available from Volumes Volumes.
