Naomi Ayala is a poet, educator, and community activist. She makes her residence in Washington, DC where, until recently, she served as the coordinator for curriculum and instruction at the National Council of La Raza's Center for Community Educational Excellence. She is currently the Program Director of Celebra la Ciencia: Changing the Face of Science, a community science festivals project bringing science resources to Latino communities in six cities across the US. Ayala is the author of Wild Animals on the Moon (Curbstone Press), selected by the New York City Public Library as one of 1999's Books for the Teen Age. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals in the US and beyond, including Callaloo, The Village Voice, The Caribbean Writer, The Massachusetts Review, Red River, the Potomac Review, and Hanging Loose. Ayala migrated from Puerto Rico as an adolescent in the late 1970s to New Haven, Connecticut, where she remained until 1997. She is the recipient of the 2001 Larry Neal Writers Award for Poetry from the DC Commission on the Arts, the Connecticut Latinas in Leadership Award, the Trailblazer Arts Award, and the 2000 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy of Environmental Justice Award.