Dodici Azpadu’s Albuquerque Story: Lesbian, Sicilian-American Writing and Teaching

Dodici Azpadu is an Albuquerque-based novelist, poet and creative-writing teacher whose work connects lesbian identity with Sicilian-American heritage. Born in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood in the 1940s, Azpadu comes from a family that emigrated from the Kalsa, a historic quarter of Palermo, Sicily.

Her writing has been described as part of a distinctly Sicilian-American and lesbian literary perspective. Alongside novels, she has published multiple poetry collections, as well as short stories and other work. Her writing has appeared in literary journals including Off Our Backs, The Found Poetry Review and Sinister Wisdom.

Azpadu’s work has also been included in anthologies focused on Italian-American and LGBTQ+ writing. These include Hey Paesan! Writing by Lesbians and Gay Men of Italian Descent, published in 1999; Mary Jo Bona’s The Voices We Carry: Recent Italian American Women’s Fiction, published in 2007; and Centos: A Collection of Collage Poems, published in 2011. Together, those appearances place her work within overlapping literary conversations about sexuality, ancestry, women’s writing and experimental poetry.

Her academic background includes a bachelor’s degree from St. Joseph’s College in New York, a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from Pacific Western University. At Iowa, she studied with the novelist José Donoso.

Teaching has been a significant part of Azpadu’s career. She has taught at Gannon College, the University of New Mexico’s Honors College and Central New Mexico Community College. She lives in Albuquerque, where she teaches creative writing.

For Albuquerque readers, Azpadu’s biography offers a local entry point into a broader literary history: one shaped by migration from Palermo to Brooklyn, by lesbian publishing and community, and by the movement between poetry, fiction and the classroom. Her presence in the city also links local higher education and writing instruction to a body of work that has circulated through LGBTQ+ and Italian-American literary networks.

The available biographical account does not provide a complete publication list or details about her individual novels and poetry volumes. It does establish Azpadu as a writer whose lesbian and Sicilian-American perspectives are central to how her work has been situated, and as a longtime educator connected to Albuquerque’s creative-writing community.

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