LETRAS LATINAS is pleased to announce....

Felicia Zamora

Felicia Zamora wins 2016 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize

Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies is pleased to announce Felicia Zamora of Fort Collins, Colorado as the winner of the seventh edition of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize—an initiative which supports the publication of a first book by a Latino/a poet residing in the United States. Noted poet, Edwin Torres, was the judge.

“In its constant unhurried evolution, Zamora has crafted a work that celebrates the impact of form as human revolution — the poem’s breath, the poet’s body — passing over time in a landscape thirsty for passage. The lungs between the lines, one continuous vertibration, page to page, word to other. Zamora’s reminder, is to affect each part of the poem by the organized assemblage of its gathering. Implementing a profoundly gentle humanity that connects to the shifting external across borders, continuously returning to invention — with a charge to the ‘think’, a dare to the heart, that brings the reader to the reader’s own voice. With a language that lives to be lived, she brings about ‘other’ as ‘in’ — to affect change by knowing that change needs to happen underneath our organized paradigms, beneath layers of cognition. This is quietly revolutionary work that throws a gauntlet to the social diaspora. A living palimpsest to newly awaken our social engagement by breathing in a simultaneity of opposing forces — as tectonic plates of hearing that create new fissures inside the unfolding kinetic,” read Torres’ award citation.

Felicia Zamora is the winner of the 2015 Tomaž Šalamun Prize from Verse, and author of the chapbooks Imbibe {et alia} here (Dancing Girl Press 2016) and Moby-Dick Made Me Do It (2010). Her published works may be found or forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review, BOMB, Camas, Cimarron Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, ellipsis…literature and art, Harpur Palate, Hotel Amerika, Indiana Review, Juked, Meridian, North American Review, Phoebe, Pleiades, Potomac Review, Puerto del Sol, Tarpaulin Sky Magazine, The Burnside Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, The Laurel Review, The Journal online, The Normal School, The Pinch Journal, TriQuarterly Review, Witness Magazine, West Branch, and others. She is an associate poetry editor for the Colorado Review and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Colorado State University.  

“This prize is a huge honor for me. The work of Letras Latinas and the Institute of Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame impacts Latino/a poetry around the country, and for an emerging poet like myself, helps bring dreams into fruition,” said Zamora.

Zamora’s winning manuscript, Of Form & Gather, will be published in 2017 by University of Notre Dame Press.

Letras Latinas strives to enhance the visibility, appreciation and study of Latino literature both on and off the campus of the University of Notre Dame, with an emphasis on programs that support newer voices and foster a sense of community among writers.