SAVE THE DATE: Tuesday, August 18

 One Poem: A Protest Reading in

Support of Black Lives

  

The founding members of the Poetry Coalition, a network of 25+ poetry organizations from across the United States, are honored to present One Poem: A Protest Reading in Support of Black Lives on Tuesday,August 18 at 8 PM EST via live broadcast. In this nationwide reading curated by the coalition, a poet invited by each founding member organization will share a poem in support of Black lives.

Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, has invited Emma Trelles to perform her poem, “How We Lived.”

 

 

Emma Trelles is the daughter of Cuban immigrants and the author of Tropicalia (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, a finalist for Foreword/Indies poetry book of the year, and a recommended read by The Rumpus. She is currently writing a second book of poems, Courage and the Clock.  Her work has been anthologized in Verse Daily, Best American Poetry, Best of the Net, Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity, and others.  Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in the Poetry Coalition’s "One Poem: A Protest Reading in Support of Black Lives"; the Santa Barbara Literary Journal; the South Florida Poetry Journal; SWWIM;  Zócalo Public Square; the Colorado Review; and  Spillway.  A CantoMundo Fellow and a recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, she lived and worked for many years as an arts journalist in South Florida and now lives with her husband in California, where she teaches at Santa Barbara City College and curates the Mission Poetry

Full Roster of Poets

Prisca Afantchao

Sojourner Ahebee

Kazim Ali

Kimberly Blaeser

Jericho Brown

Meera Dasgupta

Kwame Dawes

Tongo Eisen-Martin

Safia Elhillo

Martín Espada

Sesshu Foster

Kimberly Jae

Raina J. León

Mwatabu S. Okantah

Alberto Ríos

Terisa Siagatonu

Matthew Thompson

Emma Trelles

Nikki Wallschlaeger

Monica Youn

avery r. young

This virtual event is free. Attendees will have the opportunity to contribute funds to support organizations nationwide working against injustice.

 RSVP for One Poem: A Protest Reading in Support of Black Lives

 

About the Poetry Coalition

The Poetry Coalition is a national alliance of more than 25 organization dedicated to 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. Members are nonprofit organizations whose primary mission is to promote poets and poetry, and/or multi-genre literary organizations that serve poets with disabilities and of specific racial, ethnic, or gender identities, backgrounds, or communities. All members present poets at live events. Each March, members present programming across the country on a theme of social importance. The Poetry Coalition is coordinated by the Academy of American Poets and we are grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its support of this work.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes wins the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize

Darrel Alejandro Holnes

Letras Latinas, the literary initiative of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, is pleased to announce that Darrel Alejandro Holnes as the latest recipient of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Named after the late Chicano poet from Fresno, the Prize is a collaboration with University of Notre Dame Press and supports the publication of a first book by a Latinx poet residing in the United States. The ninth edition of the Prize was judged by John Murillo, with assistance from screeners Yesenilla Montilla and Roberto Carlos Garcia.

Murillo’s award citation reads:

“Darrel Alejandro Holnes is a poet of promise and vision.  And Stepmotherland is a promising and visionary debut.  In this first collection, Holnes displays an impressive range of both subject and sensibility.  Whether working in more traditional lyric, narrative, and lyric-narrative modes, or experimenting with nonce forms derived from theater, geometry, and even dictionary entry formats, Holnes’ poems exhibit a lively imagination and keen intellect.  At turns erotic, often political, and always vulnerable, Stepmotherland  provides the reader a fresh perspective on the myriad ways in which history—whether personal or national—can, by its very nature, blur the lines between witness and participant, between doer and done to.”

A native of Panama and currently based in New York City, Holnes is a previous recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry. His poems have previously appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, The Caribbean Writer, Callaloo, Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere in print and online. Holnes is a Cave Canem and a CantoMundo fellow. His poetry has also earned him scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the C.P. Cavafy Poetry Prize from Poetry International, and residencies nationwide including at the MacDowell Arts Colony. He is an Assistant Professor at Medgar Evers College and he teaches at New York University.  Find more at darrelholnes.com  

“It is an honor to be the 9^th recipient of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize from Letras Latinas for my book of poems STEPMOTHERLAND. This book is over a decade in the making and it is the product of love and support from my many communities of writers, friends, and family who have supported my development over the years. My thanks to the judge, John Murillo, for selecting my manuscript for this prize from a list of finalists that includes poets I greatly admire, and others whose work I look forward to reading. Thanks to the Prize’s initial screeners, Yesenia Montilla and Roberto Carlos Garcia. And many thanks to the Montoya family and the Institute for Latino Studies at Notre Dame for establishing this prize. It’s exciting for me to join a family of past winners whose work extends the legacy of Andrés Montoya, a poet and an activist whose poetry renowned poet Rigoberto González named as some of “the best to come out of our community.” I hope to represent Montoya's legacy well with STEPMOTHERLAND, a collection of poems about coming of age, coming out, and coming to America.”

Once again, Letras Latinas would like extend its congratulations to the other finalists for the 9th edition of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize:


Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta is an Afro-Latinx associate professor at City University of New York-BCC, where she teaches creative writing and Latinx literature. She was born in Chicago to a Colombian father and Cuban mother, both community leaders in Logan Square. Dr. Acosta edited the Routledge anthology, Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity. Her work is also in Kweli Journal, Red Fez, The Acentos Review, American Studies Journal, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, Paterson Literary Review, The Lauryn Hill Reader, Pembroke Magazine, MiPoesias, and forthcoming sci-fi anthology, The Latinx Archive. She is a Macondo Fellow and a Geraldine Dodge Foundation Poet. 

JP Infante is a teacher and writer in New York City. His poetry and prose can be found in PEN America Best Debut Short Stories for 2019, Kweli, The Poetry Project, Acentos Review, Post (blank) mag, Rigorous, Dominican Writers, Ritmo Que Late Anthology, Uptown Collective, Manhattan Times, Bronx Free Press, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext Anthology and elsewhere. He’s been awarded the PEN Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, Bernard L. Einbond Memorial Prize, and the Aaron Hochberg Family Award. He also won DTM magazine’s “Latino Identity in the US” essay contest.

Jasminne Mendez is a poet, performer, playwright, educator, and award winning author. Mendez has had poetry and essays published by or forthcoming in The New England Review, The Acentos Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, and others. She is the author of two mixed genre collections Island of Dreams(Floricanto Press, 2013) which won an International Latino Book Award, and Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e: Personal Essays and Poetry(Arte Publico Press, 2018). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and has received fellowships from Canto Mundo and the Kenyon Review Writer's Workshop among others. She is an MFA graduate of of the Rainier Writer's Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University, and a University of Houston alumni. 

Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the editor of Grabbed: Writers Respond to Sexual Assault forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2020 and an Associate Editor for SWWIM Every Day. She is the author of Visionware (Finishing Line Press). Recent work can be found at The Best American Poetry Blog, Rhino, Go Magazine, Fantastical Florida and others. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, a Florida Artist Fellowship and nominee for two Pushcart Prizes, The Best of the Net and a Lambda Literary Award. She teaches Dual Enrollment for Florida International University and is an English Professor for Miami Dade College. She resides in Miami, FL with her wife and son.

Martin Hill Ortiz, a native of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a professor of Pharmacology at the Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico where he lives with his wife and son. A score of his short stories have appeared in print, anthologies and online journals. His sixty-page poem, Two Mistakes, won the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid poetry award. He has authored four mystery thrillers, including Never Kill A Friend from Ransom Note Press. Along with his scientific background, he has worked in theater, having run a comedy troupe in South Florida.

 *

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.

We have our Andrés Montoya finalists!

For the 9^th edition of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Letras Latinas counted on the critical eye of two preliminary screeners. They were Yesenia Montilla and Roberto Carlos Garcia. For the first time we have decided to pause, and celebrate the finalists that Montilla  and Garcia have selected, and whose manuscripts are currently being reviewed by final judge John Murillo.

Our finalists are:

Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta is an Afro-Latinx associate professor at City University of New York-BCC, where she teaches creative writing and Latinx literature. She was born in Chicago to a Colombian father and Cuban mother, both community leaders in Logan Square. Dr. Acosta edited the Routledge anthology, Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity. Her work is also in Kweli Journal, Red Fez, The Acentos Review, American Studies Journal, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, Paterson Literary Review, The Lauryn Hill Reader, Pembroke Magazine, MiPoesias, and forthcoming sci-fi anthology, The Latinx Archive. She is a Macondo Fellow and a Geraldine Dodge Foundation Poet. 

Darrel Alejandro Holnes is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry. His poems have previously appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, The Caribbean Writer, Callaloo, Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere in print and online. Holnes is a Cave Canem and a Canto Mundo fellow. His poetry has also earned him scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the C.P. Cavafy Poetry Prize from Poetry International, and residencies nationwide including at the MacDowell Arts Colony. He is an Assistant Professor at Medgar Evers College and he teaches at New York University.  Find more at darrelholnes.com  

JP Infante is a teacher and writer in New York City. His poetry and prose can be found in PEN America Best Debut Short Stories for 2019, Kweli, The Poetry Project, Acentos Review, Post (blank) mag, Rigorous, Dominican Writers, Ritmo Que Late Anthology, Uptown Collective, Manhattan Times, Bronx Free Press, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext Anthology and elsewhere. He’s been awarded the PEN Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, Bernard L. Einbond Memorial Prize, and the Aaron Hochberg Family Award. He also won DTM magazine’s “Latino Identity in the US” essay contest.

Jasminne Mendez is a poet, performer, playwright, educator, and award winning author. Mendez has had poetry and essays published by or forthcoming in The New England Review, The Acentos Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, and others. She is the author of two mixed genre collections Island of Dreams(Floricanto Press, 2013) which won an International Latino Book Award, and Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e: Personal Essays and Poetry(Arte Publico Press, 2018). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and has received fellowships from Canto Mundo and the Kenyon Review Writer's Workshop among others. She is an MFA graduate of of the Rainier Writer's Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University, and a University of Houston alumni. 

 

Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the editor of Grabbed: Writers Respond to Sexual Assault forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2020 and an Associate Editor for SWWIM Every Day. She is the author of Visionware (Finishing Line Press). Recent work can be found at The Best American Poetry Blog, Rhino, Go Magazine, Fantastical Florida and others. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, a Florida Artist Fellowship and nominee for two Pushcart Prizes, The Best of the Net and a Lambda Literary Award. She teaches Dual Enrollment for Florida International University and is an English Professor for Miami Dade College. She resides in Miami, FL with her wife and son.

 

Martin Hill Ortiz, a native of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a professor of Pharmacology at the Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico where he lives with his wife and son. A score of his short stories have appeared in print, anthologies and online journals. His sixty-page poem, Two Mistakes, won the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid poetry award. He has authored four mystery thrillers, including Never Kill A Friend from Ransom Note Press. Along with his scientific background, he has worked in theater, having run a comedy troupe in South Florida.

The Poetry Coalition is proud to present:

Tonight, we were slated to gather at Busboys and Poets on 450 K Street in Washington, D.C. to hear the poetry of Teri Ellen Cross Davis and Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes. Slated to join Letras Latinas as a co-presenter was Split This Rock: this was meant to be a “Pre-Festival” event on the eve of their 2020 Festival. This was meant to be Letras Latinas’ contribution to the Poetry Coalition’s 2020 March program:

I am deliberate

and afraid

of nothing

Poetry and Protest

COVID-19 changed all of that.

In a spirit of nimbleness and resourcefulness, our two poets rose to the occasion and accepted our invitation to produce the two videos below for your viewing and listening pleasure.

Enjoy them.

Please share them…from wherever you are sheltering in place:

This Poetry Coalition Program

is supported by

the Academy of American Poets

with funds from

the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

heidi andrea restrepo rhodes is a queer, second-generation Colombian/Latinx immigrant, poet, artist, scholar, and activist. She is the author of the poetry collection The Inheritance of Haunting (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), which won the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Her book was recently profiled in Poets & Writers annual Debut Poets feature. Her creative work has been published, exhibited, and performed in As/Us, Pank, Raspa, Word Riot, Feminist Studies, Huizache, the National Queer Arts Festival, The Sick Collective, the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division, SomArts, and Galería de la Raza, among other places. She was a semi-finalist for the 2017 92-Y/Unterburg Poetry Center Discovery Contest. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Political Theory at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Born in Arizona and raised in California, she currently lives in Brooklyn. She can be found on Instagram at: @vessels.we.are

Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of Haint, (Gival Press, 2016) winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry.  Her second book, A More Perfect Union, won the 2019 Charles B. Wheeler Prize, awarded by The Journal, and is forthcoming. She is a Cave Canem fellow and a member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective. She has received fellowships to attend  the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Community of  Writers Poetry Workshop, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is the recipient of a Meret grant from the Freya Project and a 2019 Sustainable Arts Grant. Her work can be read in: Academy of American Poets, Auburn Love’s Executive Order, Avenue, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Figure 1,  Gargoyle, Harvard Review, Kestrel, Little Patuxent Review, Natural Bridge, North American Review, MiPOesias, Mom Egg Review, Pacifica Literary Review, PANK, Poet Lore, Poetry Ireland Review, and Tin House. She is the 2019-2020 HoCoPoLitSo Writer-in-Residence for Howard County, Maryland, adjunct professor at George Washington University, and the Poetry Coordinator for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C.  She lives in Maryland with her husband, poet Hayes Davis and their two children.

Letras Latinas partners with Split This Rock...

This "event" was originally slated to take place on the evening of Wednesday, March 25th at Busboys and Poets at 450 K Street in Washington, D.C. Instead, Letras Latinas has commissioned our two distinguished poets to put together a DIY video of themselves reading their poetry. They will each post their video on the web sometime during the last week of March. To be sure, this is an experiment of sorts--an effort at creativity and resourcefullness; call it a gesture of resilence in these unprecedented times. Our hope, of course, is that each of these videos will take on a life of its own, complementing each other. We'd love to get a sense how many people these videos will reach. So, it goes without saying that we would welcome your feedback.

HEIDI ANDREA RESTREPO RHODES is a queer, second-generation Colombian/Latinx immigrant, poet, artist, scholar, and activist. She is the author of the poetry collection The Inheritance of Haunting (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), which won the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Her book was recently profiled in Poets & Writers annual Debut Poets feature. Her creative work has been published, exhibited, and performed in As/Us, Pank, Raspa, Word Riot, Feminist Studies, Huizache, the National Queer Arts Festival, The Sick Collective, the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division, SomArts, and Galería de la Raza, among other places. She was a semi-finalist for the 2017 92-Y/Unterburg Poetry Center Discovery Contest. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Political Theory at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Born in Arizona and raised in California, she currently lives in Brooklyn. She can be found on Instagram at: @vessels.we.are

TERI ELLEN CROSS DAVIS is the author of Haint, (Gival Press, 2016) winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. Her second book, A More Perfect Union, won the 2019 Charles B. Wheeler Prize, awarded by The Journal, and is forthcoming. She is a Cave Canem fellow and a member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective. She has received fellowships to attend the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Community of Writers Poetry Workshop, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is the recipient of a Meret grant from the Freya Project and a 2019 Sustainable Arts Grant. Her work can be read in: Academy of American Poets, Auburn Love’s Executive Order, Avenue, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Figure 1, Gargoyle, Harvard Review, Kestrel, Little Patuxent Review, Natural Bridge, North American Review, MiPOesias, Mom Egg Review, Pacifica Literary Review, PANK, Poet Lore, Poetry Ireland Review, and Tin House. She is the 2019-2020 HoCoPoLitSo Writer-in-Residence for Howard County, Maryland, adjunct professor at George Washington University, and the Poetry Coordinator for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. She lives in Maryland with her husband, poet Hayes Davis and their two children.

Striving To Do Better

Doing arts programming can be—is messy. I’m referring, in this instance, to curating and creating spaces, platforms—pick your term—for writers to share their work in community spaces.

At last year’s AWP conference in Portland, something unfortunate unfolded, where off-site events are concerned. Two membership organizations with similar missions held off-site readings that directly competed with one another.

This year, for San Antonio, Letras Latinas attempted to bring these two orgs together to put on an event in collaboration with one another—specifically, a One Poem Festival, under the auspices of these two orgs: CantoMundo and Macondo; and Letras Latinas.

The aim was to curate 20 reading slots: 

7 for CandoMundo

7 for Macondo

6 for Letras Latinas

Each org was given autonomy to curate their slots as they saw fit, presumably, among their membership. Letras Latinas, which is not a membership organization, assigned itself the task of reaching out to Latinx poets who were neither CantoMundo nor Macondo fellows, but who had, in the past, been involved in a Letras Latinas event or initiative.

Its six slots went to poets with ties to the following communities:

Puerto Rican

Queer (2)

Honduran

Argentine

Mexican/Chicanx

Colombian

When all three orgs brought their rosters together and this information was passed on to our poster designer, our failure, in my view, was not pausing and looking at our roster of 20 readers and asking the question:

What community is missing?

And then re-vising our efforts accordingly. We all have blind spots.

It may be (though this is not an excuse) that Letras Latinas did not ask this question, where Afro-Latinx poets, is concerned, because Letras Latinas has been mindful on this score in the past; and our national first book prize for Latinx poetry is currently being judged and screened by three Afro-Latinx poets.

BUT: 

by not asking the question, Letras Latinas dropped the ball. 

We apologize and pledge to do better in the future.

That said, Letras Latinas’ revised roster of  6 poets, for the upcoming One Poem Festival in San Antonio next Thursday, does now include an Afro-Latinx poet.

We still hold out hope that the full roster will include more.

I AM DELIBERATE / AND AFRAID/ OF NOTHING

FEATURING

heidi andrea restrepo rhodes

&

Teri Ellen Cross Davis

Wednesday, March 25^th

6:30 PM

@

Busboys and Poets/450K

450 K St. NW

Washington, D.C. 20001

free and open to the public

 

heidi andrea restrepo rhodes is a queer, second-generation Colombian/Latinx immigrant, poet, artist, scholar, and activist. She is the author of the poetry collection The Inheritance of Haunting (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), which won the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Her book was recently profiled in Poets & Writers annual Debut Poets feature. Her creative work has been published, exhibited, and performed in As/Us, Pank, Raspa, Word Riot, Feminist Studies, Huizache, the National Queer Arts Festival, The Sick Collective, the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division, SomArts, and Galería de la Raza, among other places. She was a semi-finalist for the 2017 92-Y/Unterburg Poetry Center Discovery Contest. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Political Theory at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Born in Arizona and raised in California, she currently lives in Brooklyn. She can be found on Instagram at: @vessels.we.are

Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of Haint, (Gival Press, 2016) winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry.  Her second book, A More Perfect Union, won the 2019 Charles B. Wheeler Prize, awarded by The Journal, and is forthcoming. She is a Cave Canem fellow and a member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective. She has received fellowships to attend  the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Community of  Writers Poetry Workshop, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is the recipient of a Meret grant from the Freya Project and a 2019 Sustainable Arts Grant. Her work can be read in: Academy of American Poets, Auburn Love’s Executive Order, Avenue, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Figure 1,  Gargoyle, Harvard Review, Kestrel, Little Patuxent Review, Natural Bridge, North American Review, MiPOesias, Mom Egg Review, Pacifica Literary Review, PANK, Poet Lore, Poetry Ireland Review, and Tin House. She is the 2019-2020 HoCoPoLitSo Writer-in-Residence for Howard County, Maryland, adjunct professor at George Washington University, and the Poetry Coordinator for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C.  She lives in Maryland with her husband, poet Hayes Davis and their two children.

LETRAS LATINAS, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, joins SPLIT THIS ROCK to co-present—on the eve of its Festival—this “Pre-Festival Event” as part of the POETRY COALITION’s 2020 March program, named after Audre Lorde’s arresting lines.