Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s most recent book is Children of the Land: a Memoir, (Harper Collins 2020). He is also the author of Cenzontle, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. prize (BOA editions 2018), winner of the 2019 Great Lakes Colleges Association Award, The Foreword Indies bronze prize, The Golden Poppy Award from Northern California Booksellers Association, and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award, the California Book Award, The Thom Gunn Award from the Publishing Triangle, the Lambda Literary Award, and named a best book of 2018 by NPR and the New York Public Library. His first chapbook, Dulce, was the winner of the Drinking Gourd Prize published by Northwestern University Press. As one of the founders of the Undocupoets campaign, he was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. His work has been featured in the New York Times, People Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, and the Wall Street Journal among others. He lives in Northern California where he teaches poetry to incarcerated youth and teaches at the Ashland University Low-Res MFA program as well as a visiting assistant professor at St. Mary’s College. 

Marcelo is part of the Art for Justice project. The poject commissions new work from leading writers in conversation with the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States, with the goal of creating new awareness and empathy through presentation and publication. In particular, through the work of leading poets, the project seeks to confront racial inequities within the criminal justice system to promote social justice and change. Click here to learn more.