Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio Presents Mary Oishi

Mary Oishi is Albuquerque’s Poet Laureate (2020-2022). She is the author of Spirit Birds They Told Me (West End Press, 2011), and co-author with her daughter, Aja Oishi, of Rock Paper Scissors (Swimming with Elephants, 2018), finalist for the New Mexico Arizona Book Award.

Oishi is published in numerous reviews and anthologies in the United States and internationally, in English and in translation, including 12 Poetas: Antologia De Nuevos Poetas Estadounidenses (La Herrata Feliz and MarEsCierto, 2017), a project of the Mexican Ministry of Culture.

She served as Adjunct Professor for the University of New Mexico and is a returning instructor for the Taos Writers Conference (2021 – 2022).

Oishi worked as a public radio professional and on-air personality at four radio stations in New Mexico and Colorado for more than 25 years, currently at KSFR-FM Santa Fe.

Her social justice activism is life-long. She served as lead facilitator for an LGBTQ youth group for seventeen years, produced Peace Buzz, an event of art-as-protest in 2003, and was an NGO delegate to the UN World Conference Against Racism in 2001.