We Are Now Open for Submissions.....

John Murillo

Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, is pleased to announce the Final Judge for the 2020 edition of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize.

A collaboration with University of Notre Dame Press since 2004, the Prize supports the publication of a first book by a Latinx poet residing in the United States.

Our winners, judges, and books, thus far have been:

Sheryl Luna

selected by Robert Vazquez

for Pity the Drowned Horses (2005)

Gabe Gomez

selected by Valerie Martínez

for The Outer Bands (2007)

Paul Martínez Pompa

selected by Martín Espada

for My Kill Adore Him (2009)

Emma Trelles

selected by Silvia Curbelo

for Tropicalia (2011)

Laurie Ann Guerrero

selected by late Francisco X. Alarcón

for A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying (2013)

David Campos

selected by Rhina P. Espaillot

for Furious Dusk (2015)

Felicia Zamora

selected by Edwin Torres

for Of Form & Gather (2017)

Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes

selected by Ada Limón

for The Inheritance of Haunting (2019)

Some changes are afoot for this our 9^th edition of the Prize, which honors the legacy of Chicano poet Andrés Montoya.

SUBMIT

We will also, for the first time, be counting on the collaboration of two guest screeners.

 Statement from our Final Judge:

“I am both honored and humbled to sign on as judge of this year’s Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize.  At a time when there appears to be an all-out war on brown people in this country—when children are caged, mothers disappeared, and fathers gunned down on the regular, not to mention the daily, less sensational, degradations of living under a white supremacist regime—it is as imperative now as it’s ever been that we make ourselves heard, seen, and felt.  Now more than ever we need our artists, our culture workers, our poets.  To play, then, even a small part in helping usher into the world one of these necessary voices is a privilege.  It is a sacred duty, one I will carry out to the best of my ability and treat with all the seriousness it deserves."

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John Murillo is the author of the poetry collections, Up Jump the Boogie, finalist for both the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Pen Open Book Award, and Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, forthcoming from Four Way Books in the spring of 2020. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Best American Poetry 2017 and 2019 among other venues.  His honors include a Pushcart Prize, the J Howard and Barbara MJ Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Cave Canem Foundation, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.  He is an assistant professor at Wesleyan University and also teaches in the low residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada College.

Our guest screeners:

Poet, storyteller, and essayist, Roberto Carlos Garcia writes extensively about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-diasporic experience. His second poetry collection, black / Maybe: An Afro Lyric, is available from Willow Books.  Roberto’s first collection, Melancolía, is available from Červená Barva Press. Roberto is founder of the non-profit press Get Fresh Books Publishing and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Yesenia Montilla is an Afro-Latina poet & a daughter of immigrants. She received her MFA from Drew University in Poetry and Poetry in Translation. Her first collection, ,The Pink Box, was published by Willow Books & was Longlisted for a PEN award in 2016. She is currently a Co-Director of CantoMundo. She lives in Harlem NY.

 

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