Dr. Ricardo Nazario y Colón is a Puerto Rican poet, scholar, and higher education leader whose work stands at the crossroads of literature, history, and institutional life. Across more than three decades in higher education, he has led work in student affairs, campus life, and system-level strategy while sustaining a deeply rooted literary practice shaped by diaspora, colonial memory, race, place, and cultural survival.
Born in New York and formed by the worlds of the Bronx, Puerto Rico, and later Appalachia, Nazario y Colón writes from the layered realities of migration and inheritance. His work is animated by the histories that live inside language: Afro-Caribbean memory, Puerto Rican identity, the afterlives of empire, and the complicated geographies of belonging. His poetry often moves across the South Bronx, Puerto Rico, Appalachia, and upstate New York, tracing the emotional and historical ledger carried by communities shaped by displacement, resilience, and reinvention.
He is a co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets, the groundbreaking literary collective established in the 1990s to make visible the voices of writers of color in Appalachia. The Affrilachian Poets helped reshape the national understanding of Appalachian literature by challenging narrow assumptions about who belongs to the region and who has the authority to speak from it. Through that collective work, Nazario y Colón has helped advance a broader, more truthful vision of Appalachian identity and American letters.
Nazario y Colón is the author of three books of poetry, including The Recital, Of Jíbaros and Hillbillies, and The Moor of the Bronx. Together, these collections speak to the currents that define his work: Puerto Rican and Nuyorican experience, Blackness, memory, masculinity, migration, family, and the weight of history on the living. His poems and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies, and he has participated in readings, panels, and literary gatherings across the United States.
He is also at work on new manuscript projects, including Orfeito, an upcoming work that reimagines myth, ancestry, and cultural memory through a bilingual and diasporic poetic lens. As with much of his writing, the manuscript reflects his enduring interest in how personal story, collective history, and the ceremonial power of language can be braided into new forms.
Nazario y Colón’s literary work has been widely recognized. He was selected as a Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for the Western Region of North Carolina, 2018-2021, an honor awarded by the North Carolina Poetry Society to poets whose work demonstrates both artistic excellence and meaningful engagement with communities across the state. In this role, he presented readings, workshops, and public programs that expanded access to poetry throughout the region.
Alongside his literary accomplishments, Dr. Nazario y Colón has built a distinguished record of leadership in public higher education. He most recently served as Senior Vice Chancellor and System Chief Diversity Officer for the State University of New York, where he provided strategic leadership across one of the nation’s largest public university systems. In that capacity, he advanced work on student success, leadership development, campus climate, and inclusive institutional practice across SUNY’s 64 campuses.
Before serving in system leadership, he held senior campus roles focused on student affairs, diversity leadership, and institutional transformation, including positions at Western Carolina University and Morehead State University. Throughout his career, he has worked to strengthen the democratic mission of higher education by building institutions capable of serving students with integrity, courage, and a clear public purpose.
Whether through poetry or leadership, Nazario y Colón’s work is guided by a common principle: that memory matters, that culture matters, and that institutions and art alike must reckon honestly with history if they are to help shape a more humane future. His body of work reflects a sustained commitment to the people and places too often left at the margins of official narratives, and to the enduring power of language to preserve, challenge, and remake the world.
He lives in upstate New York, where he continues to write, mentor, collaborate, and develop new creative and scholarly projects.
Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet of the Western Region (2018) — North Carolina Poetry Society
Co-founder, Affrilachian Poets
Author of the poetry collections:
Of Jíbaros and Hillbillies, The Recital, and The Moor of the Bronx
Poems included in major anthologies, including:
Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy
Writing Appalachia: An Anthology
Field Guide to Southern Appalachia
Nationally published poet in literary journals and anthologies
Top 10 Finalist (2026) — Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize, published by The Heartland Review
Forthcoming poetry manuscript (2026): Orfeito