Robert Fernandez, born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1980 and raised in Hollywood, Florida, is a poet, translator, and visual artist. He is the author of Scarecrow (Wesleyan University Press, 2016), as well as Pink Reef (2013) and We Are Pharaoh (2011), both published by Canarium Books. He co-translated Azure: Poems and Selections from the “Livre” by Stéphane Mallarmé (Wesleyan University Press, 2015), and his poetry has appeared in Callaloo, Huizache, Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, The Nation, The New Republic, Poetry, Thrasher, Transition, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. He is also the author of two forthcoming chapbooks, Las Moradas (arrow as aarow) and Wild Child (b l u s h).
His books have received widespread critical acclaim. Scarecrow was selected by Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket) as one of the “books of poetry I found especially useful this year,” named a “must-read” by Flavorwire, and included in “the very best of 2016” by Tin House. “And,” from Scarecrow, was featured by Idra Novey on the Poetry Foundation podcast Poetry Off the Shelf. In 2016, Azure was featured in an essay by Alex Ross on Mallarmé for The New Yorker. In 2013, a selection of Pink Reef was published in Boston Review with an introduction by Timothy Donnelly, and the book was later named a best book of 2013 by Cal Bedient for The Volta and by Shane McCrae in an article on the Los Angeles Review of Books site. In 2025, Pink Reef was also chosen by Joyelle McSweeney for the Poetry Foundation’s National Poetry Month recommendations as “an older collection that remains a touchstone, the book that comes to mind first when they’re asked for a poetry rec.” We Are Pharaoh was named a “stand-out debut” by Poets & Writers magazine and earned Fernandez recognition as a New American Poet by the Poetry Society of America selected by Robyn Schiff.
A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a Teaching-Writing Fellow, Fernandez has received honors including a Yaddo residency, the Gertrude Stein Award, and an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant for the study of narrative theory awarded by Garrett Stewart. His essays and writings on poetry have appeared with the Poetry Society of America, the Poetry Foundation, and in Poetry magazine. For the January/February 2024 issue, Poetry featured Fernandez’s drawings, poems, an essay, and a writing prompt as part of its new series on poetic form, Not Too Hard to Master. He has served as co-editor of the PEN Poetry Series and guest blogger for Poetry magazine’s Harriet blog, where he interviewed Josely Vianna Baptista and Juan Carlos Galeano about their own work and the indigenous poetics of the Amazon. His paintings have been exhibited at 1122 Gallery in Portland and featured in Caesura.
Fernandez’s ongoing translation projects include Antigòn by Haiti’s Félix Morisseau-Leroy, an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone set in a Haitian context, an excerpt of which appears in The Brooklyn Rail’s InTranslation series, as well as a selected collection of poems by Colombia’s José Asunción Silva, some of which appear in The Chicago Review, The Elephants, and The Brooklyn Rail. He has also translated poems by Silva and Benjamín Puche for the Central Bank of Colombia, with the original Spanish texts featured on new Colombian banknotes.