Dominican American author Julia Alvarez has released a new poetry collection titled Visitations, which delves into the realities of aging at 76, according to a report by HipLatina on June 26, 2026.
Alvarez, known for her debut novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies, returns to poetry, which she calls her foundational creative outlet.
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“Four decades of my life, what the publishers wanted was novels, and I was working on those, but in between and sometimes in the middle of that, I would always return to my rock bottom, which was poetry,” Alvarez said.
She described poetry as her first love and the purest form of linguistic expression.
“To keep returning to it is like to keep reminding myself of the best that language can be,” she added.
The collection includes poems written over various stages of her life, focusing on growing older. Alvarez noted that she has encountered racism, ethnic prejudice, and now ageism.
“I’m now in the –ism of ageism,” she said.
She observed that older people are often sidelined in stories. “So often, older people are not the main characters in any story.
They’re usually in the background dispensing advice or the witch that’s getting in the way of the protagonist,” Alvarez said.
Turning 76 inspired her to explore the final chapters of life. “If we’re lucky, we’re all going to get old.
So it’s a landscape that is worth exploring,” she stated.
