Jacquelyn Stroud Spier

Jacquelyn Stroud Spier was born in El Paso to a family who came to the border to escape the 1910 Mexican Revolution.   

Jacque graduated form El Paso High School in 1956, was active as a ROTC Sponsor and Officers Club, Student Council, Debate Team, Latin Club, Masque & Gavel and was a Program Manager.

She found her poetic voice in a family where two languages and cultures were arguing, loving and coming to terms with family rituals.   The tension finds voice in her poetry which pays homage to that tension and the ordinary moments in her life.  Spier believes her most profound writing experience was writing her graduate thesis under the unrelenting gaze of Raymond Carver’s critical eye.  In the late 70’s and early 80’s, she was a part-time lecturer in the English Department at the University of Texas at El Paso.  In 1986, she joined her husband in establishing the Rio Grande Health Center. In 2000, The Dallas Women’s Museum published Desert Echo:  Women Illuminate the Sacred,  a book of her poetry with fifteen artists.  They performed opening night in Dallas to present the book.  In 2010, Jacquelyn, Susan Amstater and Connie Dillman published their second book, Yes, We’re Still Dancing.  Later Jacquelyn published Border Spirits: Espiritulistas with Jim Spier, her brother-in-law and EPHS classmate.   

Two of her books can be found in Special Collections at UTEP.