Xochiquetzal Candelaria earned an MFA from New York University and has received multiple fellowships, including those from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the author of Empire (Camino del Sol, 2011), which poet Cathy Park Hong called “a sensuous and lucid meditation on lineage, from the haunting and mythic narratives of [Candelaria's] ancestry to her tautly drawn memories of growing up in California. It is a book of tender and deeply imagined songs.” Her work has appeared in The Nation, The New England Review, Gulf Coast, The Seneca Review, among other literary journals. She teaches at San Francisco City College.