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.