Poet, Educator, and Storyteller based in Richmond, Virginia

"Rosa Castellano’s All Is the Telling is a raw song of ache. Evoking childhood and collective memory with a razor-sharp pen, Castellano creates a music on the page that gestures towards the act of empathy for the self as an act of empathy for the world: a largeness of heart that wants to take in our shared histories and simultaneously be forgiven its too-fierce embrace. We can’t escape the past, but—with an ear tuned expertly toward forgiveness and kinship—Castellano’s poems can teach us to live in the unfolding promise of the present."

Keetje Kuipers, author of Lonely Women Make Good Lovers
"In the opening poem of Rosa Castellano’s debut collection, All is the Telling, we hear, “& a person you know will say: / children are resilient / and that’s true. I survived / what I survived.” Resilience is separate from survival, yet they are braided into the hair of “A Girl the Color of Sunshine on Water, the Color of a House on Fire, the Color of Drowning,” as she lays bare the messy truths of Black existence in liminal spaces. Castellano writes of the sweetness within the struggle, “the slow art / of a bee bending into a blossom.” True resilience is the result of healing. Castellano’s poems remind us of the possibility and power within."

Rage Hezekiah, author of Yearn
"Rosa Castellano’s All is the Telling is a collection in which both historical and contemporary understandings of Black female subjectivity are two waves colliding. As a result, we see a portrait of Black girlhood that acknowledges the deep, historical knowing that young Black girls often carry, their early realizations about the world’s true nature and how love and violence are inseparable. These astute Black girls become Black women who tell this world’s story as they truly are, who come bearing all of the news, good or bad. Only in their hands, and in Castellano’s, do I trust that the mirror held up to me will be spotless—I see America and its history, which means that I see myself and all of my ancestors before me."

Taylor Byas, author of I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times
"The unsparing poems in Rosa Castellano’s All Is the Telling move like “the whisper of wings/ as they widen/ and wear/ imperceptibly down/ to the sea,” which is to say they manifest true presence. These poems abide, never leaving our side, in spite of the inhumanity they invite us to bear witness to. And to bear. For all our sake."

Tomas Q Morin, author of Machete, Patient Zero, and A Larger Country

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Rosa Castellano

Originally from Tampa, Fl, Rosa Castellano is a poet and teacher living in Richmond, VA. A finalist for Cave Canem’s Starshine and Clay Fellowship, and co-founder of the RVA Poetry Fest, her poems can be found or are forthcoming from RHINO Poetry, Diode, Passages North, Nimrod, The Ninth Letter, and Poetry Northwest among others. She has an MFA from VCU and her debut poetry collection, All Is the Telling, will be out this Spring from Diode editions.

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“When people immerse themselves in poetry, things often come up: memories, feelings, sometimes even a smell - connections that I can't plan for or predict”

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Poet, Educator, and Storyteller based in Richmond, Virginia

Rosa Castellano

“When people immerse themselves in poetry, things often come up: memories, feelings, sometimes even a smell - connections that I can't plan for or predict”

ROSA CASTELLANO