Letras Latinas is pleased to announce.....

--> 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

We have our judges....

Letras Latinas

is pleased to announce

Ada Limón

and

Carmen Giménez Smith

 as the judges for the next

Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize

&

Letras Latinas/ Red Hen Poetry Prize

respectively

*

The deadline for both:

January 15, 2018

* 

Ada Limón

*

Carmen Giménez Smith

*

For more information about the Prizes
visit Letras Latinas: 

http://latinostudies.nd.edu/institute-initiatives/letras-latinas/

 

LETRAS LATINAS is pleased to announce...

Joe Jiménez wins Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize

Joe Jiménez  

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 jointly announce Joe Jiménez of San Antonio, Texas 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 Latino/a poet residing in the United States. Noted writer and critic, Rigoberto González, was the judge.

“Joe Jiménez’s poetry shimmers with arresting imagery and light, but its beauty is hard-won—a victory song celebrating the bittersweet journey of one who inhabits the queer space inside the Chicano heart. Among the many graces of this book manuscript is that its language feels at home in serene desert vistas and on explosive barrio streets. It recognizes guidance from the living and the dead, and its breath aches with longing and comforts like prayer,” read González’s award citation. 

Joe Jiménez is the author of, The Possibilities of Mud (Korima Press, 2014), as well as the chapbook, A Silver Homebody Flicka Illuminates the San Juan Courts at Dawn, recipient of the 2011 Gertrude Press Poetry Chapbook Prize. In 2012 he was the recipient of the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Poetry Prize. His YA novel, Bloodline, is forthcoming from Arte Público Press later this spring. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles and is a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop in San Antonio, where he resides and teaches.

News of Jiménez’s win prompted Poet Laureate of Texas, Laurie Ann Guerrero, to offer these thoughts on his poetry: “Joe Jiménez’s vulnerabilities and raw truths mark the fecundity of and fluidity of masculinity. His is the work of a broken-open, risk-taking documentarian and demands that his reader enter openhearted as well. I am overjoyed that his work will now be in the hands of so many and, too, that we get to call him one of our own.”

Jiménez is the first Chicano/a poet to win the Letras Latinas /Red Hen Poetry Prize. Founded in 2012, the Prize’s previous winners have been DC-based Cuban American poet Dan Vera, Salvadoran-born, Los Angeles-based poet, William Archila, and Argentine-born, New Jersey-based poet Ruth Irupé Sanabria. "The fact that our winners, so far, come from such varied backgrounds speaks, I think, to the rich diversity of voices emerging from Latino communities across the United States," said Francisco Aragón, director of Letras Latinas and faculty member at Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies. "But I'm also pleased to have Joe join this list not only because of his fine poetry, but because of the work he does with youth. He's slated to teach the first ever Macondo Writers Workshop for youth this summer."

“I am grateful for this opportunity to bring attention to the part of the world I am from.  Deeply, and with each of my bones, I love South Texas, and these poems, from the alligator gar and the cotton field rattlesnake, to the armadillo and the half-human owl, push me to question the loneliness of men, to ask the man I have been about the one I am becoming. I hope these poems stir thoughts and questions and joys, sadnesses even, because I believe life is richer when we ask these things of ourselves,” said Jiménez, after learning his manuscript had been singled out by González.

Red Hen Managing Editor Kate Gale said of the award, “We are proud of our partnership with Letras Latinas and to be publishing the groundbreaking work of Joe Jiménez.”

Jiménez’s award-winning manuscript will be published in the spring of 2019. In the spring of 2017, Ruth Irupé Sanabria’s Beasts Behave in Foreign Land, selected by Lorna Dee Cervantes, is slated for publication.

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.

Red Hen Press is committed to publishing works of literary excellence, supporting diversity , and promoting literacy in our local schools. We a community of readers and writers who are actively engaged in the essential human practice known as literature.