About
Magdalena Gómez, Poet Laureate of Springfield, MA (2019-2022) was also an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow (2021-2022) In 2019 she received the Latinas 50 Plus Literature Award at Fordham University, and the Latinx Excellence on the Hill Award from the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus of MA at the State House. She was a 2018 recipient of the NEPM, Arts and Humanities Award. The nationally acclaimed musical, produced by Pregones/PRTT, Dancing in My Cockroach Killers, based on a dozen of her poems, has been performed in Los Angeles, DC, Massachusetts, and Off-Broadway in New York City. Her memoir noir, Mi’ja, a lyrical prose, intertextual work that includes documented dreams and poems, was released in May, 2022, Heliotrope Books. New Observations editor, and figurative bronze sculptor Leah Poller, calls Mi’ja “…the re-invention of 21st century literature.” Gómez also specializes in plays about undervalued BIPOC champions of justice, including, ERASED: a poetic imagining on the life of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, (with a Pan-African score, and A Beautiful Anarchy, based on the life of Boricua labor leader, journalist, feminist and child rights activist, Luisa Capetillo. www.latinapoet.com