Vincent Toro is the author of two poetry collections: "Tertulia," published by Penguin Random House, and “Stereo.Island.Mosaic.,” which was awarded the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award and Ahsahta Press's Sawtooth Poetry Prize. He is winner of The Caribbean Writer's Cecile De Jongh Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize, the Alice James Book Award, the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, and the Omnidawn Prize. In 2014, he was awarded both a Poet’s House Emerging Poets Fellow and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. In 2020 he received a NJ Council on the Arts Writing Fellowship. Vincent has also been awarded an associate artist residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, the Amiri Baraka Scholarship to attend Naropa University's Summer Writing Institute, and a scholarship to attend the Can Serrat Artist retreat in El Bruc, Spain. 

Vincent has been published in the Academy of American Poets Poetry Poem-A-Day, Poetry Daily, Small Axe, Washington Square, BOAAT, The Texas Review, The Denver Quarterly, Anomaly, The Hawai'i Review, Huizache, Queen Mob's Teahouse, The California Journal of Poetics, Rattapallax, The Paterson Literary Review, Vallum, Bordersenses, Kweli Literary Journal, The Buenos Aires Review, The Acentos Review, Really System, Five Quarterly, Duende, Codex, Rattle, The Ostrich Review, The Cortland Review, Matter, The Caribbean Writer, The Cream City Review, Vinyl, Chiricu Journal of Latino Literature, Split This Rock’s Poem of the Week,  and in the anthologies Coloring Book: An Anthology of Multicultural Poems and Stories, Saul Williams’ CHORUS, The Waiting Room Reader, Best Experimental Writing 2015, and Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump's America.

Vincent’s plays have been produced Off-Broadway at INTAR, Teatro La Tea, The San Pedro Playhouse in San Antonio, The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio, Raices Theater in Buffalo, and The Spanish Repertory Theater, where his play “21” was awarded the Nuestras Voces Playwriting Prize. In 2009 he received The Alamo Theater Arts Council Golden Globe Award for Best Direction of a Drama for his staging of Topdog/Underdog at the San Pedro Playhouse in San Antonio, Texas. From 2006 to 2011, Vincent was Performing Arts Director at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio, Texas.

For 20 years, Vincent has worked as a social justice arts educator, teaching poetry, literature, and theater, in colleges and public schools throughout New York, New Jersey, and Texas. Vincent is a member of the Macondo Writer’s Foundation  and serves as member of the board for GlobalWrites, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting literacy through the integration of technology and the performing arts in schools throughout the U.S. 

He is an Assistant Professor of English at Rider University, serves as a poet in the schools for the Dodge Poetry Foundation and the Dreamyard Project, and is an editor for Kweli Literary Journal.

Website: www.grito.org

Twitter Username: @toropoet

Publications

• Tertulia , Penguin Random House (June 2, 2020)
• Stereo.Island.Mosaic. , Ahsahta Press (February 22, 2016)

Awards

• NJ Council on the Arts Writing Fellowship(2020)
• Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award.(2017)
• Sawtooth Poetry Prize(2015)
• NYFA Poetry Fellowship(2015)
• Poet's House Emerging Poets Fellowship(2014)
• Metlife Nuestras Voces Playwriting Award(2011)
• Finalist, The Caribbean Writer's Cecile De Jongh Literary Prize(2015)
• Nuestras Voces Playwriting Award(2018)

Employment

• Assistant Professor of English at Rider University (August 2021 - )
• Adjunct Lecturer at Bronx Community College (August 2013 - August 2021)
• Poet in the Schools at Dodge Poetry Foundation (January 2005 - )
• Performing and Literary Arts Director at Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (August 2006 - July 2011)

Degrees

• Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Rutgers University (May 2013)

Genres of Interest

Playwriting, Poetry