Ruth Irupé Sanabria was born in Bahia Blanca, Argentina during a dictatorship (1976-1984) that claimed the lives of over 30,000 people from all walks of life. She and her mother were exiled to Seattle, Washington in 1979, and she grew up between Seattle and Washington D.C. Her first collection of poetry, The Strange House Testifies (Bilingual Press), won second place (Poetry) in the 2010 Annual Latino Book Awards. Her second collection of poems, Beasts Behave in Foreign Land, received the 2014 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press Award. Her poems have appeared in anthologies such as Women Writing Resistance and U.S. Latino Literature Today. She holds an M.F.A. from New York University and a B.A. in English and Puerto Rican & Hispanic Caribbean Studies from Rutgers. She works as a high school English teacher and lives with her husband and three children in Perth Amboy, N.J.