Karen Isabel Ocaña is a first-generation settler Canadian, Toronto-born, now residing in multilingual Montreal, Tiohtià:ke, Mooniyang. She is a poet, a literary translator, and a writer of prose fiction and non-fiction.
Her debut poetry collection, Red Bolero, was published in June 2025 by Montreal’s Sky of Ink Press. Several poems appeared previously in Kola magazine and JONAH online magazine. She has been published in the Ottawa Review of Books and in Chronicling the Days: Dispatches from a Pandemic, edited by Linda Morra and Marianne Ackerman (Guernica Editions, 2021). Karen was a jury member for the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal (2018, 2019, 2020).
Her literary translations (from both French and Spanish into English) have appeared in recent years in ARC Poetry, The Capilano Review, and The Malahat Review. Her book-length translation of poetry by Louise Dupré, Rooms (Guernica, 2017) was shortlisted for the 2017 Cole Foundation Translation Prize.
Karen enjoys taking classes at the Quebec Writers’ Federation and reading at open mics, particularly at Lectures Logos Readings in Little Burgundy.
