Photo of Jose Ballesteros courtesy of Ross Mulhausen of the University of Puget Sound.
A Hyattsville poet has launched the only bilingual press in the Washington area.
Jose Ballesteros, who teaches Spanish at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, has launched Zozobra Publishing to feature poetry and prose from Latino writers.
The press was recently featured in the Gazette:
In February, the company published its first book, “The Light of the Storm,” a poetry anthology by Carlos Parada Ayala of Washington, D.C.
The book, available in English and Spanish, was translated by Zozobra.
Ballesteros, 42, said he wants Zozobra to tap into the county’s championing of the arts by giving it a bilingual literary presence.
“One of the important things for me personally is that eventually Hyattsville feels like it has a press here,” he said.
Ballesteros, a native of Ecuador, studied at the University of Kansas and worked at St. Mary’s after receiving his Ph.D. He lived in Fredericksburg and the District before moving to Hyattsville in 2008.
You can read a poem by Ballesteros on the Hyattsville Wire here.
Update: The story was also reprinted in the Washington Post.
