Unaccompanied
September 5, 2017 | Copper Canyon Press
Javier Zamora’s debut collection, Unaccompanied, assesses borderland politics, race, and immigration on a profoundly personal level, and simultaneously remembers and imagines a birth-country that’s been left behind. Through an unflinching gaze, plainspoken diction, and a combination of Spanish and English, Unaccompanied crosses El Salvador and Mexico as families are lost and reunited, coyotes lead migrants astray, and real life fuses with myth.
Winner, Northern California Book Award 2018
Winner, Firecracker Award from the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses 2018
Finalist, Kate Tufts Discovery Award 2019
“Javier’s experience and message are crucial amid today’s political confusions, and we look to him as a beacon to the future.”
“Zamora details his experience emigrating from El Salvador to the U.S. at age nine in his timely and excellent debut, a heartbreaking account of leaving behind the grandmother who raised him to join parents he barely remembered.”
“Zamora insists that the stories he houses in his blood deserve to be told, and in the telling he has created a truly astonishing debut.”
Journals
“[Immigration Headline],” "El Salvador," "How I Learned to Walk," "Guadalajara," "Looking at a Coyote," "The Pier of La Herradura," "Saguaros," "Nocturne," "Whatever I Did After" | Poetry Magazine
“[Immigration Headline]” 3 Poems | Missouri Review
“Poem Dreamt on a Plane, or, Fragility”, “La Globalization” | LA Review of Books
“Enamorándome, or, Post-Deportation:” | Orion Magazine
"Citizenship", “Exiliados” | The New York Times
“Each Morning”, “Cholera” | The Progressive
“Citizenship” | Poem-a-Day
"Colossus" | 92 Street Y
"Alterations," "Doctor's Office First Week in this Country," "SF Bay & 'Mt. Tam'" | Virginia Quarterly Review:
"Casette-Tape" | Granta
"Dancing in Buses" | Ploughshares
“from The Book I Made with a Counselor My First Week of School” | Washington Square Review
"On a Dirt Road Outside Oaxaca" | The New Republic
"Aftermath," "Let Me Try Again," "To Abuelita Neli" | Kenyon Review
“Documentary”, “Mamá Pati Responds to her Shaming” | American Poetry Review
“Vows” | Gulf Coast
“How To Enlist,” | NACLA: Report on the Americas
“Montage with Mangos” | AGNI
"Jumping Cholla Cactus," "Aubade" | Tri-Quarterly
"Don Chepe," "Kite Flying" | PEN America
"Disappeared," "Uniform" | FENCE
"Since Last We Spoke" | Blackbird
“Alternate Endings” | Provincetown Arts Magazine
"Nocturne," (Poem of the Week, Jan. 2016) "Put This Book Down," "Then, It Was So," (Poem of the Week, Aug. 2014) "Sonoran Song & Other Poems" (2017 Narrative Prize Winner) | Narrative
“Ponele Queso Bicho Means Put Cheese On It Kid” | Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review
“Abuelita’s Garden,” “To The Drawer,” | Huizache: The Magazine for Latino Literature
“I Don’t Want To Speak of Don Chepe” (2014 contest winner) | CONSEQUENCE Magazine
“Seeing Your Mother Again” | Indiana Review
“ARENA,” “Te Toca,” | Notre Dame Review
"Only the Streets Know" (2014 contest winner) | Meridian
"El Chillón," "Pump Water from the Well" | Ninth Letter
Anthologies
“To President-Elect” | Resistencia: Poems of Protest and Revolution (Tin House, 2020)
Three Poems | The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext (Haymarket Books, 2020)
“Doctor’s Office First Week in This Country” | Grabbed: Take Back the Narrative, edited by Richard Blanco (Grove Press, 2020)
“Columbine” | Freeman’s: The Best New Writing on California (Grove Press, 2019)
“Second-Attempt Crossing” | Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience (Seven Stories Press, March 2019)
Selected poems | Misrepresented People (New York Quarterly Books, Fall 2018)
Selected poems | Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology (University of Georgia Press, March 2018)
Selected poems | The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States (Tia Chucha Press, March 2017)
Selected poems | Happiness: The Delight-Tree, An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry (United Nations SRC Society of Writers, 2017)
Selected poems | Theatre Under My Skin/Teatro Bajo mi Piel: Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry (Editorial Kalina, March 2014)
Selected poems | Best New Poets 2013 (University of Virginia Press, 2013)