ABOUT

Alicia Vogl Saenz (she/ella) is a poet, meditation instructor, and museum professional at LACMA who brings her queer and mixed immigrant background to her writing and teaching. She considers herself a third-culture kid. Vogl Saenz’ parents met in Quito, Ecuador. Her mother, Ecuadorian, and her father given asylum in that country, from Czechoslovakia. She is deeply influenced by the expansive world view instilled from her parents. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Grand Street, Blue Mesa Review, Mischief, Caprice, and Other Poetic Strategies (Red Hen Press) and Pratik. She is the author of the chapbook The Day I Wore the Red Coat (VCP Press, 2001) and translated poet Mariano Zaro's book, Tres Letras (Walrus) into English. For the last 30 years, Alicia has performed her poetry throughout Southern California. She is a member of Macondo Writers Workshop, the Lezarati Writer’s Group, CAYA writers group, and has been in residence at Hedgebrook. Currently she is working on a manuscript inspired by Los Angeles as an ecosystem.

My main art form is poetry. I also like to make things. I’m interested in dissolving the hierarchy between fine art and craft. My parents both worked with their hands and read a lot of books. Dad taught me to whittle at seven and gave me a pen knife. Mami and I took flamenco classes together. My family danced together and ate with gusto. We walked in forests and listened to leaves. In winter, climbed down rocky paths to locals-only beaches. We traveled.

I have worked at LACMA since 1999 and am currently the Manager of Family Programs. I oversee art classes, camps and drop-in family programs. I co-manage Art & Meditation and Mindful Mondays: Cultivating Empathy and Connectedness. I am passionate about accessibility to art.

My parents immigrated from Ecuador to Los Angeles in 1952. My mother was born in Quito, a city high in the Andes, surrounded by volcanoes. My father along with his immediate family escaped the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939 and were granted asylum in Ecuador. Growing up in the 70s, in a household with immigrant parents of two differing cultures, the third child with siblings over ten years my senior, in a suburban house in the valley, and then my high school spent years in Ecuador, paved the way for me to be a writer. Writing, like all art making, gives me tools to navigate the intersection of my identities, helps me see commonalities with others, and allows space for gray areas and discovery.

Currently, I’m writing a book of poems and short prose—Wildlife Lives Here—inspired by Los Angeles as an ecosystem and natural habitat.  

I live in Los Angeles with my two cats, Fritz and Otto von Kat, named after German expressionist Otto Dix and Fritz Lang.