Anna Deeny Morales

Adjunct Professor, CLAS Fellow in the Humanities

ANNA DEENY MORALES is a US-based Latina writer who grew up between Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. She works in poetry and music as a librettist, translator, and literary critic. 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. Recent works 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, made its world debut at the Kennedy Center in 2022 with the IN Series and the Georgetown University Orchestra. ZAVALA-ZAVALA was selected by the Latiné Musical Theater Lab for the 4XLatiné Showcase at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, NYC, in 2023, 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. Deeny Morales 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 works in translation 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. Her monograph on Latin American and US poetry, Other Solitudes: Essays on Consciousness and Poetry, is forthcoming in 2025.

Deeny Morales received a BA in English Literature with a minor in Piano Performance from Shepherd University; an MA in Comparative Literature, with an emphasis on Puerto Rican theater, from Dartmouth College; and a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Berkeley. She also studied theater and directing at the Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica, Silvio d'Amico, in Rome, Italy. A Fellow in the Humanities at the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University, Deeny Morales has lectured in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Dartmouth College as well as the History and Literature Program at Harvard University. At Harvard she was named an "Inspiring Latina" by Latinas Unidas and awarded two Derek Bok Excellence in Teaching Awards.

Deeny Morales was the 2023 Academy of American Poets Judge for the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. She has also served as judge for the National Translation Award in Poetry, and an expert reader for the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship competition. She chaired the Gabriela Mistral Bilingual Poetry Competition and currently sits on the board of directors of the IN Series.

Photo by Tamzin Smith.