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Carl Marcum
Carl Marcum wins Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize
Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of
Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, and Red Hen Press, the Los Angeles
area literary press, are pleased to announce Carl Marcum as the winner of the Letras
Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize—an initiative which supports the publication of a
second or third book by a Latinx poet residing in the United States. His
full-length manuscript was selected by noted poet, memoirist, editor and
publisher Carmen Giménez Smith.
"Reading A Camera
Obscura is like having your head in the clouds, like understanding the
source of stars, a book ‘so vast it stays captured’ in your imagination. And
this is precisely what Carl Marcum pulls off in this stunning work,"
Giménez Smith shared.
Carl Marcum was born in Nogales, Arizona to a Mexican mother
and Anglo Father. He received his MFA from the University of Arizona and
published his first collection, Cue Lazarus, with the University of
Arizona Press as part of their Camino del Sol series. He has been a Wallace
Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and a recipient of grants from the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Ragdale
Foundation. His poems have been featured in the anthologies The Wind
Shifts: New Latino Poetry, Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and
Latino Writing and Latino/a Rising: An Anthology of Latin@ Science
Fiction and Fantasy. He taught Creative Writing for many years at DePaul
University in Chicago and now lives in Pittsburgh where he manages an
Engineering and Environmental Consulting Firm in the Marcellus Shale.
“I am very pleased to have A Camera Obscura selected.
I am doubly thrilled that my work was selected by Carmen Giménez Smith, a poet I admire and respect.
There are so few awards for second and third books, and I am very happy that
this initiative seeks to award Latinx poets who have already published a debut
collection. In my experience, the second collection is more difficult to write,
and more rewarding to complete. Estoy muy honrado de ser seleccionado para este
premio. Mil gracias,” Marcum said, shortly after receiving the news that his
manuscript had been designated the winner.
The Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize, which is deliberate
in how it paces the publication of its winners, has two books in the pipeline
now. Joe Jiménez’s manuscript, Allegory,
Rattlesnake, was selected by Rigoberto González in 2016 is slated for publication
next year (2019). Carl Marcum’s collection is slotted for 2021. The next submission
deadline is January 15, 2020. The final judge is yet to be designated.
The Letras Latinas/Red Hen series to date is as follows:
Speaking Wiri Wiri (2013)
by
Dan Vera
—selected by Orlando Ricardo Menes
The Gravedigger’s Archaeology (2015)
by
William Archila
—selected by Orlando Ricardo Menes*
Beasts Behave in Foreign Land
(2017)
by
Ruth Irupé Sanabria
—selected by Lorna Dee Cervantes
Rattlesnake Allegory (2019)—forthcoming
by
Joe Jiménez
—selected by Rigoberto González
A Camera Obscura (2021)—forthcoming
by
Carl Marcum
—selected by Carmen Giménez Smith
Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the Institute for
Latino Studies (ILS), strives to enhance the visibility, appreciation and study
of Latinx literature both on and off the campus of the University of Notre Dame—with
an emphasis on programs that support newer voices, foster a sense of community
among writers, and place Latinx writers in community spaces. Letras Latinas is
a founding member of the Poetry Coalition, a group of organizations working
together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and the important
contribution poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds.
Red Hen Press, based in Pasadena, CA, is committed to
publishing works of literary excellence, supporting diversity, and promoting
literacy in local schools. They seek a community of readers and writers who are
actively engaged in the essential human practice known as literature.
*in order to establish the desired pace of publication, the
inaugural judge was asked to select two manuscripts from the first pool of
entries
