Juan J. Morales was born in the U.S. to an Ecuadorian mother and a Puerto Rican father. He grew up hearing family stories that inspired much of the poems in Friday and the Year that Followed, his first collection of poetry, which was chosen by Vern Rutsala for the 2005 Rhea and Seymour Gorsline Poetry Competition and published by Bedbug Press.  Juan received his MFA from the University of New Mexico in 2005.  His poetry has also appeared in Acentos Review, Blue Mesa Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Many Mountains Moving, Palabra (forthcoming), Poet Lore, War, Literature, & the Arts, and other journals.  He is the Director of Creative Writing as an Assistant Professor at Colorado State University-Pueblo, where he curates the Southern Colorado Reading Series and the student literary magazine Tempered Steel, formerly The Hungry Eye.  Currently, Juan is working on his second collection of poems.