Mercedes Rodriguez is a poet and educator from Los Angeles, CA.
Chosen by Pulitzer Prize winner Brandon Som as the recipient of the 2025 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize, her work appears in New England Review, The Georgia Review, Washington Square Review, Michigan Quarterly Review: Mixtape, like a field, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere.
Her work has received support from Bread Loaf, Millay Arts, the Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts, and the Charleston Literary Festival’s Cato Fellowship.
She holds an MFA from North Carolina State University and serves as program associate for the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets.
She loves FB Marketplace, pho, and making Spotify playlists.
Her favorite simile is “pretty like a transgender.”
