Born in Santa Ana, El Salvador, poet William Archila immigrated to the United States in 1980 to escape his native country’s civil war. He earned an MFA at the University of Oregon. His poems engage themes of social justice, brutality and identity. Archila is the author of the poetry collections The Art of Exile (2009), which won the Emerging Writer Fellowship Award from the Writer’s Center as well as the International Latino Book Award, and The Gravedigger’s Archaeology (2013), which won the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize. His poetry is also featured in the anthologies Another City: Writing from Los Angeles (2001) and New to North America: Writing by U.S. Immigrants, Their Children and Grandchildren (1997). Archila lives in Los Angeles. Presented in partnership with FIU Writer's on the Bay Series.