Xavier Navarro Aquino was born and raised in Puerto Rico. His fiction has appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and Guernica, among other publications. His poetry has appeared in The Caribbean Writer and was anthologized in Thicker Than Water: New writing from the Caribbean. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras where he earned an M.A. in English Caribbean studies. Currently, he’s a fiction editor for Prairie Schooner.
While at MacDowell, he finished his novel, Lantern in a Caravel. The novel looks to retell William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and incorporates Shakespeare’s Caliban from The Tempest. Told via the perspectives of seven interchanging protagonists, they attempt to survive post-hurricane María in a dystopic present by establishing an independent society called Memoria in the outskirts of the mountain town, Utuado. The novel explores the effects of trauma after a natural disaster and the legacy of colonization in Puerto Rico.
