Neil de la Flor is a writer, educator, and Executive Director of Reading Queer, a Knight-funded organization dedicated to promoting queer literary culture in South Florida. He is the author of three solo collections of poetry, including The Ars Magna for the Manifold Dimensions of z (JackLeg Press, 2021), An Elephant’s Memory of Blizzards (Marsh Hawk Press, 2013), and Almost Dorothy (Marsh Hawk Press, 2010).
His first book, Almost Dorothy, won the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. Forrest Gander writes, “Almost Dorothy is the red-headed stepchild of Antony (without the Johnsons) and Jean Cocteau. Infusing poetry with theater, Neil de la Flor is at once bitingly original, funny, and uncompromising.”
de la Flor’s second book, An Elephant’s Memory of Blizzards (Marsh Hawk Press), examines the narrator’s obsession with hope and memories. Julie Marie Wade writes, “The currency of these poems is sensory and extra-sensory. They have electric blue eyes and readily self-personify.They shape-shift and spontaneously combust. They speak to us in ‘the awe-/some language of hairdo.’ I can feel these poems on my skin like a blush. I can hold them between my teeth like pearls.” Read the full review here.
de la Flor is also the author of four collaborative books, including Sinead O’Connor and her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds (Firewheel Editions, 2011), co-authored with Maureen Seaton and winner of the Sentence Book Award; Facial Geometry (NeoPepper Press, 2006), co-authored with Maureen Seaton and Kristine Snodgrass; and Two Thieves and a Liar (Jackleg Press, 2012), also co-authored with Maureen Seaton and Kristine Snodgrass.
In Sarah Burghauser’s review of Sinead O’Connor and her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds for Lambda Literary, she writes, “Lusty, swanky, and well-toned, these poems are playful without being light, and smart without being esoteric. Read this book to witness an inspiring dexterity with language. Read this book for a loving sucker-punch to the brain. Read this book in a place where it is okay to lol, or even to loofah.”
de la Flor’s writings, both solo and collaborative, have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Barrow Street, Pank, Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Court Green, Best American Poetry Blog among other journals. He earned a M.F.A. from the University of Miami where he was a Michener Fellow. He lives and teaches in South Florida.
Neil de la Flor 