Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is the author of Children of the Land: a Memoir (Harper Collins, 2020); Cenzontle (BOA editions, 2018), which Brenda Shaughnessy selected as the winner of the 2017 A. Poulin, Jr. Prize; and Dulce (Northwestern University Press, 2018), winner of the Drinking Gourd Prize. His work has been adapted to opera through a collaboration with the composer Reinaldo Moya. Additionally, Castillo is the translator of work from the Argentinian modernist poet, Jacobo Fijman, and is currently at work translating the poems of the contemporary Mexican Peruvian poet Yaxkin Melchy. 

Castillo is a founding member of the Undocupoets, which eliminated citizenship requirements from all major poetry book prizes in the U.S., and was recognized with the Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers Award. He was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan and lives in Northern California where he serves as the poet laureate of Yuba and Sutter Counties. 

Castillo currently teaches at St. Mary’s College of California and in the Ashland University low-residency MFA program. He is the Guest Editor of Poem-a-Day for October 2022.