Author Spotlight: Juan Pablo Luzuriaga

Buy: ‎ Cotopaxi Whispers by Juan Pablo Luzuriaga | Blue Light Press | August 7, 2026 | 978-1421836133

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What living poet/writer had the biggest influence on your book?

That’s tough because there are several, but my friend Juan Felipe Herrera, the former U.S. Poet Laureate, has been a huge inspiration not only as a writer but as a person. There is a quality in his writing that feels completely free. He moves between languages, cultures, sounds, images, and forms without asking permission.

What are some key themes present in your book?

Some of the key themes in Cotopaxi Whispers are immigration, assimilation, identity, language, family, ancestry, and belonging. The book explores what happens when we distance ourselves from parts of who we are in order to fit in, and how we find our way back. Spanish and English live together in these poems because they live together in me.

Is there a connection to your past in your book?

Absolutely. The past is everywhere in Cotopaxi Whispers. There’s ancestral and generational trauma, immigration, assimilation, my years being undocumented, childhood memories, family, and Ecuador. I’m also interested in the things we inherit without choosing them—the stories and silences that travel through generations. In many ways, the past in this book isn’t really past. It continues to live in our language, our families, our bodies, and our memories. Writing these poems became a way of looking back, understanding what I carry, and reclaiming parts of myself I once tried to leave behind.

What was the impetus for this body of work?

When life stopped during the COVID-19 outbreak, there was silence. Followed by fear, sickness, and death. During that time, it hit me: “Oh, yeah. I’m gonna die someday.” Maybe even soon, I thought, because who knows what’ll happen. So, I asked myself a question we immigrants don’t often get to ask: “What do I want to do?” We usually don’t get to answer that question because the first answer is survival—making ends meet. But in this case, I was brave enough to answer, and it was clear—I want to write. Something I’d been doing ever since I was a child, but now I wanted to do it in the open, no longer in the shadows.

I want this book to serve as a blueprint for people who get lost in the assimilation process like I did. I wanted to be white, but realized my power lies in being in my own skin. For people who move to the U.S. and think that they have to purge their own culture to fit in, I want this book to say: you don't. I want the undocumented to see their language mixed with English. I want the American to see Ecuadorian culture and get used to Spanish. This book tries to bring people together and introduce a new world to those who haven't seen it. This world is sick and this is my tiny contribution toward healing.

Do you have a new project that you’re working on? Could you tell us a bit about it?

One of the projects I’m working on is a book that uses prose and poetry to explore Ecuadorian colloquialisms and the culture and stories behind them. Ecuadorian Spanish is full of interesting slang and idioms that carry so much history. I want people to learn about them, and I’m challenging myself to create a sort of creative dictionary—one that doesn’t simply define these expressions, but brings them to life through poetry, stories, memory, and culture.

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Juan Pablo Luzuriaga was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and immigrated to the United States at sixteen. He spent nearly eleven years undocumented before becoming a U.S. citizen. He studied neuroscience at Rutgers University and literature at UC Merced. Luzuriaga teaches poetry at California Men’s Colony through the William James Association and is a South Coast Writing Project fellow. Winner of the 2026 Blue Light Book Award, his work has appeared in The Acentos Review, San Diego Poetry Annual, Monterey Poetry Review, and Cholla Needles, among others. His debut collection, Cotopaxi Whispers, was published by Blue Light Press in 2026.