Curated Conversation(s): Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta with Yesenia Motilla

Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta discusses her debut poetry collection, Things to Pack On the Way to Everywhere, with Yesenia Montilla. Curated Conversation(s): a Latinx Poetry Show is a monthly interview with a Latinx poet who has recently published their first book in conversation with a self-selected peer or mentor.

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Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta is an associate professor at the City University of New York-BCC. Her first book of poetry, Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere, is an Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize finalist and it is forthcoming from Get Fresh Books in 2021. She is the editor of Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity (Routledge, 2019), an anthology that features over Latinx 30 contributors and subjects. Recent work can be found in Best American Poetry, The Baffler, Acentos Journal, Kweli Journal, Red Fez, Gathering of the Tribes Magazine, In Full Color, Paterson Literary Review, MiPoesias, Short Plays on Reproductive Freedom, and Celebrating Twenty Years of Black Girlhood: The Lauryn Hill Reader. She is a Geraldine Dodge Foundation Poet and a Macondo Fellow.

Yesenia Montilla is an Afro-Latina poet & a daughter of immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in the Chapbook For the Crowns of Your Head, as well as the literary journals Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, Pittsburgh Poetry Review & others. She received her MFA from Drew University in Poetry and Poetry in Translation & is a 2014 CantoMundo Fellow. Her first collection The Pink Box is published by Willow Books & was Longlisted for a PEN award in 2016. She lives in Harlem NY.

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Curated Conversation(s): a Latinx Poetry Show is a collaboration between The Writer’s Center, Duende District, Poet Lore, and Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies. This project is funded by the Poetry Foundation and the generosity of individual donors.