Anna Deeny Morales

ANNA DEENY MORALES is a US-based Latina writer who grew up between Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. Her works in opera and poetry consider everyday family love and children; modes of empathy; patterns of political, legal, and religious violence; strategies of disappearance; and family separation. Her operas have been supported by the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Georgetown Americas Institute, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. She received a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Berkeley; an MA in Comparative Literature, with an emphasis on Puerto Rican theater, from Dartmouth College; and a BA in English Literature with a minor in Piano Performance from Shepherd University. After college, she studied theater and directing at the Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica, Silvio d'Amico, in Rome, Italy. Her monograph, Other Solitudes: Essays on Consciousness and Poetry, is forthcoming in 2026.

A Fellow in the Humanities at the Center for Latin American Studies, Georgetown University, Deeny Morales has lectured at Dartmouth College and Harvard University, where she was named an "Inspiring Latina" by Latinas Unidas and received two Derek Bok Excellence in Teaching Awards. She will be a Long Room Hub Visiting Research Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin, in the fall semester of 2025 to work on her new opera commission, Home Come Home.

Recent operas include Las Místicas de México, an immersive performance dedicated to the more than 110,000 disappeared in Mexico. Created in collaboration with Timothy Nelson, Maribeth Diggle, Tina Chancey, Marta Pérez García, and Emily Baltzer, Místicas debuted in March 2024 with the IN Series and the Children’s Chorus of Washington at the Dupont Circle Underground and the Mexican Cultural Institute. Commissioned by the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, ZAVALA-ZAVALA: an opera in v cuts, with music by composer, Brian Arreola, is based on the first family separation case under the Zero Tolerance Policy in El Paso, Texas. ZAVALA-ZAVALA made its world debut at the Kennedy Center in 2022 and was performed at Gala Hispanic Theater, Washington, DC, in June 2024. Recent adaptations of zarzuelas include Gonzalo Roig’s Cecilia Valdés (2018) and La Paloma at the Wall (2019), a new rendition of Tomás Bretón's La verbena de la Paloma. La Paloma's score was adapted by Mexican composer Ulises Eliseo. Both were commissioned by the IN Series and performed at Gala Hispanic Theater. Original works for contemporary dance and theater include La straniera (1997), an adaptation of Medea by Euripides, and Tela di Ragno (1999–2002), inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses. Both were commissioned by Il Balletto di Spoleto and performed in Italy and Spain.

A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow for her translation of Tala by Nobel Laureate, Gabriela Mistral, Deeny Morales's translations of Raúl Zurita’s poetry include Sky Below, Selected Works (Northwestern University Press, 2016), of which she is also the editor; Dreams for Kurosawa (arrow as aarow press, 2011); and Purgatory (University of California Press, 2009). Shearsman Press in London published her translation of Alejandra Pizarnik’s Diana’s Tree in 2020, and Mercedes Roffé’s Floating Lanterns in 2015. Composer Theresa Wong set selections of Floating Lanterns to music during her residency at The Stone, The New School, New York City, in 2018, and for a Long Beach Opera commission in 2020. She has guest edited literary journals such as Almost Island, based in Mumbai, India. Her essays and translations of poetry by Rosabetty Muñoz, Malú Urriola, Diana Bellessi, Idea Vilariño, Marosa di Giorgio, Mirta Rosenberg, Isabel de los Ángeles Ruano, and Idea Vilariño, among others, have appeared in anthologies and journals such as the Paris Review, Mandorla, BOMB, and the Harvard Review. Forthcoming translations include Ecopoems, Storm, & Some Fringe Benefits, a volume of selected works by Nicanor Parra, which she has edited and translated for New Directions; and Amanda Berenguer's Identity of Certain Fruits, which will be published by Point Zero Press.

Deeny Morales has served as an expert reader for the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship competition as well as judge for the Academy of American Poets Harold Morton Landon Translation Award and the ALTA National Translation Award in Poetry. She is currently Vice President of the Board of Directors of the IN Series.

Photo by Tamzin Smith.