Yesenia Montilla

Yesenia Montilla is an Afro-Latina poet & a daughter of immigrants. She received her MFA from Drew University in Poetry & Poetry in Translation. She is Canto Mundo graduate fellow and a 2020 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow. Her work has been published in Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast and in Best of American Poetry 2021 & 2022. Her translation work can be found most recently in the Climate Futurism an exhibit at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY. In 2019 her Poem Maps was part of Pulitzer Prize winning composer Caroline Shaw’s oratorio The Listeners. Her first collection The Pink Box is published by Willow Books & was longlisted for a PEN Open Book award. Her second collection Muse Found in a Colonized Body published by Four Way Books was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award. She currently teaches poetry at The Juilliard School and lives in Harlem, NY. Find her at www.yeseniamontilla.com