Elias Sepulveda was born to Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles where he lived until he moved to Wisconsin more than twenty years ago. He has this to say about writing: "Poetry is a very confessional medium for me. Growing up in rougher neighborhoods with extremely conservative parents and family created this vacuum, this suffocation, that essentially stagnated my voice. There was no place for the expression of emotions or reflection on the hardships of every day life because those types of activities were considered a weakness, and that made someone a target. I intuitively developed a strategy in my writing, using abstract form like surrealism, while adding depth to my work through multiple layering of significations created a clearing where I could incorporate my own personal history. It’s not that I feel ashamed (today) to blatantly state what I feel or went through but the richness of language that developed from that strategy is something that I hope I can share with the world."