Janel Pineda

Coordinator, Central American Working Group; Ph.D. Student, Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies
Department: César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies
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Janel Pineda is a Salvadoran poet, educator, and scholar of U.S. Central American literature. Her research conceptualizes contemporary global Salvadoran poetics and investigates the ways that poetry can be used to counteract narrative silencing and to reclaim familial and cultural (hi)stories. Her research is invested in documenting the liberatory capacities of poetry, both through traditional literary analysis and qualitative research on poetry’s active role in Salvadoran communities. In 2023, Janel was awarded a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans to support her studies at UCLA.

A first-generation college graduate, Janel earned a BA in English from Dickinson College, where she was a Posse Scholar. While at Dickinson, Janel co-founded a Latina Discussion Group to support the experience and retention of Latina students on a predominantly white, elite campus. Janel spent her junior year at the University of Oxford, as a recipient of the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. She returned to the UK in 2019 to begin her graduate studies on a Marshall Scholarship. Janel obtained an MA in Creative Writing and Education from Goldsmiths, University of London, where her research presented liberatory approaches to poetic pedagogies for young people of color, and an MPhil in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge, through which she analyzed memory and intergenerational dynamics within literary representations of Salvadorans in the U.S., El Salvador, and France.

Janel’s debut poetry book, Lineage of Rain, was published by Haymarket Books in 2021. Her poetry explores Salvadoran cultural memory, intergenerational family narratives, and diasporic joy. Janel is a part of the editorial team that founded La Piscucha Magazine, a multilingual art, literature, and culture magazine created by Salvadoran writers. Since her involvement with the 2018 Radical Roots Delegation, a group of Salvadoran diasporic organizers who met with social movement leaders across El Salvador, Janel is also a member of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). As a 2025 Writing Freedom Fellow, Janel is currently working on poetry that explores the relationship between the Salvadoran Civil War and mass incarceration.