ACLS mourns the passing of Xavier Navarro Aquino, novelist, assistant professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, and 2020 ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow. Navarro Aquino died unexpectedly on May 6, 2026, at 36 years old.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Navarro Aquino earned his bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University, a master’s degree in English and Caribbean studies from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras and his PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He was awarded an ACLS Emerging Voices Fellowship hosted at Dartmouth in 2020. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the program supported early-career scholars whose voices, perspectives, and broad visions will strengthen institutions of higher education and humanistic disciplines in the years to come.
Navarro Aquino’s debut novel Velorio takes place in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico. The 2022 novel received praise from media outlets including the New York Times and Chicago Review of Books, and he was was named a Fall 2021 Writer to Watch by Publishers Weekly.
Xavier’s writing and artwork communicate with absolute clarity his humane and painterly care for the world in all its damage and beauty. His evident joy and commitment as a teacher inspired joy and commitment in his students, and his immediate legacy will be as an artist whose sense of beauty will be carried outwards to his readers, and to his students, and to their future readers.
Navarro Aquino was a member of the University of Notre Dame Creative Writing Program and a faculty fellow of the Institute for Latino Studies and the Initiative on Race and Resilience.
Read his full In Memoriam from the University of Notre Dame.
