Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
{{short description|American poet}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2020}}
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| alma_mater = Sacramento State University,
University of Michigan
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| genre = Poetry
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Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, born 1988, is a poet and activist.{{Cite web|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/marcelo-hernandez-castillo|title=Marcelo Hernandez Castillo|date=January 31, 2020|publisher=Poetry Foundation|access-date=February 1, 2020}}"How poetry helped Marcelo Hernandez Castillo speak out on immigration" by Corinne Segal, PBS Newshour, March 14, 2016 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/poetry/how-poetry-helped-marcelo-hernandez-castillo-speak-out-on-immigration/ He lives in Marysville, California, with his wife and son.{{Cite news|url=https://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/writing-the-evasive-american-dream/content?oid=24847055|title=Writing the evasive American Dream: Former DACA recipient defies the odds to win national poetry awards and a Harper Collins contract|last=Huval|first=Rebecca|date=August 17, 2017|work=Sacramento News and Review}}
Early life
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was born in Zacatecas, Mexico. He moved to the United States at five years of age. His family settled in Yuba City, California, where his mother worked at a prune factory off Highway 113. In 2003, Castillo's father was deported. In 2017, the U.S. government allowed his parents to move back to Yuba City and apply for asylum.
Career
He received a BA from Sacramento State University and was the first undocumented student to earn an MFA from the University of Michigan. He teaches at the low-residency MFA program in Ashland University,{{Cite web|url=https://www.ashland.edu/cas/faculty-staff/marcelo-hernandez-castillo|title=College of Arts and Sciences Ashland University}} as well as to incarcerated youth in northern California.{{Cite web|url=https://redhen.org/workshops/nicole-sealey-and-marcelo-hernandez-castillo/|title=Red Hen Press: Nicole Sealey and Marcelo Hernandez Castillo}} He has taught as a resident artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, and for low-income high school students in the Upward Bound program at UC Davis. He works within the Yuba-Sutter area as a substitute teacher.
Castillo's poems and essays can be found in BuzzFeed, Drunken Boat, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Jubilat, Muzzle Mag, New England Review, The Paris American, and Southern Humanities Review among others.
Along with C.D. Wright, Castillo has translated the poems of Mexican poet Marcelo Uribe.{{Cite web|url=https://www.theparisamerican.com/poetry163.html|title=Cenzóntle by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo|website=theparisamerican.com|access-date=February 1, 2020}}
Honors
Castillo's manuscript, Cenzóntle, was selected by Brenda Shaughnessy as the 2017 winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, from BOA Editions."Marcelo Hernandez Castillo wins 2017 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize" April 11, 2017, BOA Blog https://www.boaeditions.org/blogs/main/marcelo-hernandez-castillo-wins-2017-a-poulin-jr-poetry-prize It won the 2019 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award.{{Cite news|url=http://glca.org/images/GLCA_Announces_Winners_of_the_2019_New_Writers__Award_1-18-2019.pdf|title=GLCA Announces Winners of the 2019–20 New Writers Award}} His chapbook, Dulce, was selected by Chris Abani, Ed Roberson, and Matthew Shenoda for the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize.{{Cite web|url=http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/dulce|title=Dulce|website=Northwestern University Press}}
A Pushcart nominee, Castillo has received fellowships from CantoMundo, the Squaw Valley Writer's Workshop, and the Vermont Studio Center.
Books
- Cenzóntle, (2018) BOA Editions {{ISBN|9781942683537}}
- Dulce (2018), Northwestern University Press {{ISBN|9780810136960}}
- Children of the Land, memoir, (2020), Harper {{ISBN|9780062825599}}{{Cite web|url=https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/children-of-the-land/|title=Book Marks reviews of Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo|website=Book Marks|access-date=January 31, 2020}}
Activism
Castillo was a founder, with poets Javier Zamora and Christopher Soto (AKA Loma), of the Undocupoets campaign which eliminated citizenship requirements from major first poetry book prizes in the United States."Undocupoets Organizers Are Making Headway," Harriet the Blog, February 6, 2015, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2015/02/undocupoets-organizers-are-making-headway/ With the Sibling Rivalry Press Foundation and Amazon Literary Partnership, the Undocupoets Fellowship awards two $500 fellowships to former or current undocumented poets in support of poetry-related costs.{{Cite web|url=https://siblingrivalrypress.com/undocupoets-fellowship/|title=Undocupoets Fellowship}}
References
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External links
- [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/marcelo-hernandez-castillo Poetry and Profile] at Poetry Foundation website
- [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/poetry/how-poetry-helped-marcelo-hernandez-castillo-speak-out-on-immigration/ profile of the author] on PBS
- [http://letraslatinasblog.blogspot.com/2017/03/wecomefromeverything-no-1.html Biographical letter poem] at the Letras Latinas Blog
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Category:21st-century American poets
Category:American poets of Mexican descent
Category:California State University, Sacramento alumni
Category:Hispanic and Latino American poets
Category:Immigrant rights activists
Category:Writers from Zacatecas
Category:Poets from California
Category:21st-century Mexican poets
Category:University of Michigan alumni
Category:21st-century American male writers
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:LGBTQ Hispanic and Latino American people