Photo: Carol Fox

​​Jessica Guzman was born in southwest Florida to Cuban immigrants. She is the author of Adelante (Switchback Books, 2020), selected by Patricia Smith as the winner of the 2019 Gatewood Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Shenandoah, jubilat, The Greensboro Review, Tin House's Broadside Thirty Series, The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day Series, Ecotone, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere.

Her honors include American Literary Review’s 2017 Poetry Award, Harpur Palate's 2017 Milton Kessler Memorial Prize for Poetry, and the 2016 Product Poetry Prize. She is also the recipient of scholarships from the Tin House Winter Workshop, the Poetry Workshop at the Community of Writers, and the Kentucky Women Writers Conference.

She received her B.A. from the University of South Florida, M.F.A. from West Virginia University, and Ph.D. from the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers. In addition to reading poetry submissions for Memorious, she volunteers for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. She previously taught for Franklin & Marshall College and currently teaches at Widener University, where she co-coordinates the Creative Writing Program. She lives in Philadelphia.