Aldo Amparán (pronouns: they/them) is a poet, writer, & translator born & raised in the sister cities of El Paso, TX, USA, & Ciudad Juárez, CH, MX. They are the author of Brother Sleep (Alice James Books, 2022), winner of the 2020 Alice James Award.

They are the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts & CantoMundo. Their work appears in, or is forthcoming from, AGNI, Best New Poets, Black Warrior Review, Cherry Tree, Fugue, Gulf Coast, The Journal, Kenyon Review Online, Ninth Letter, The Normal School, Poetry Northwest, The Southampton Review, Washington Square Review, & elsewhere.

 They hold an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso, where they teach.

“Amparán’s work is musically and rhythmically delicate… who could possibly exist outside this urn that is the world?”
—Emily Pérez, RHINO

“Brother Sleep declares war on the people, places, and words that stand against the powers of reconnection and re-creation by calling out the truth of their love for family, of their queer identity, and of the terror and violence against the bodies and minds of gay men. In their arsenal, Amparán wields memory, pain, and love, but not from the ubiquitous emotional landscape. Instead, they draw upon the ancient tradition of mourning loss through oratory, by sharing in poems that separate us from each other and bind us together.”
—Mikal Wix, West Trade Review

"The poems in Brother Sleep, Aldo Amparán’s debut collection, slink and stagger across the page as they explore homoeroticism and the speaker’s painful estrangement from a deceased brother... [Amparán manages] moments of gentler sensuality by combining exquisite imagery, expertly crafted consonance, and subtle syllabics."
—Diego Baéz, Harriet Books

“Aldo Amparán’s Brother Sleep is a deep meditation on the loss of a brother, queer love, and surviving violent homophobia on the U.S.-Mexico border. Set in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and El Paso, Texas the two cities hold the people that populate these poems like a bedroom where all you can do is sleep. Here people are stuck in the nonlinear world of dreams, pain, and mourning. Here people long for and find affection amidst unspeakable violence. Amparán’s vision of the border is stunning, beautifully crafted, and gut-wrenching. One of the most exciting young voices in fronterizx literature writing today.”
—Natalie Scenters-Zapico

"Aldo Amparán’s Brother Sleep is a wild ride of litanies, odes, elegies, and love poems. Each poem is an example of a poet who’s mastered his craft well enough to retrace steps back to the place where family, nationhood, and exile meet, 'I know Death/Is as fat, tall,/& white/As the edge/Of this page.' This is a beautiful debut."
—Jericho Brown