J.L.Torres (José Luis Torres-Padilla) was born in Cayey, Puerto Rico, a town in the center of the main island. He grew up in the South Bronx and received all of his formal education in the States. He considers himself a Diasporican. Born in Puerto Rico, raised in the South Bronx, he returned to his homeland and lived there for two decades before returning to the States. Like many Puerto Ricans, the vaíven is part of his personal history. He often says that the lived experience of Diasporicans feels like being stuck in the hallway between two rooms. And even when you are in either one of those rooms, you feel like you are still in the hallway. What does it mean to live that in-betweenness?
The answer to that question has driven and defined his work for over forty years. That body of work focuses on living in the liminal space that forms and informs the Disaporican experience. In his short story collections, The Family Terrorist and Other Stories, the award-winning Migrations, the novel, The Accidental Native, his poetry collection, Boricua Passport, and his new work, the novella Clemente Between the Worlds, and scholarly essays published in various publications, he aims to go beyond issues of identity, although these are central to that experience.
“Through my writing,” says Torres, “I am exploring what it means to live a life yearning for ‘belongingness.” At a time when you’re told nation and homeland are empty concepts, and you have no historical memory of what they ever meant.” He wants to explore what this means in a world becoming smaller and where geography cannot ground anything. He seeks to understand how colonialism impacts that state of mind, and how it feels to be “unhomed” even though you have a homeland.
J.L.Torres graduated from Vassar College, double majoring in Hispanic Studies and Psychology. He holds am MA and Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. Before his academic career, he freelanced for magazines and newspapers. He was also the Editor for the popular, but now defunct Salsa magazine, Latin NY. His stories have appeared in a string of magazines and literary journals. One of his stories is included in Growing Up Latino, a ground-breaking anthology published by Houghton-Mifflin. Torres is one of several Diasporican writers interviewed in the 2023 publication, Diasporic Journeys: Interviews with Puerto Rican Writers in the United States, edited by Carmen Haydee Rivera and published by Centro Press.
He is Professor Emeritus of English at SUNY Plattsburgh, where he taught American literature, Latine literatures, and Creative Writing. He was a co-founder and the Executive Editor of the Saranac Review besides the Co-Editor, along with Carmen H. Rivera, of Writing Off the Hyphen: New Perspectives on the Literature of the Puerto Rican Diaspora.
He lives in upstate New York—known to friends and relatives as “carajo county”—with his family and a lot of snow. He has no known hobbies, has never been in gangs, has never had quirky and funky jobs, and is notoriously inept with tools. He’s a devoted Yankees and Knicks fan, an avid cineaste, lover of all art and a supporter of progressive causes.
