Orlando Ricardo Menes

Orlando Ricardo Menes is a Professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame. He has been a faculty member since 2000 and holds additional roles as a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Latino Studies and Poetry Editor of the Notre Dame Review. His academic background includes a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago and M.A./B.A. degrees from the University of Florida.

His research and teaching focus on poetry, Caribbean literature, translation, and Latinx/Postcolonial studies. Menes has authored seven poetry collections, including The Gospel of Wildflowers & Weeds (2022), Memoria (2019), and Heresies (2015), alongside edited works like Renaming Ecstasy: Latino Writings on the Sacred (2004). His translations of Spanish poetry, such as My Heart Flooded with Water (2009), highlight his cross-cultural engagement.

He has received prestigious recognition including the NEA Fellowship and the 2012 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His creative and scholarly work explores themes of cultural identity, migration, and spiritual exploration through innovative poetic forms and intertextual dialogues.