Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Janine Joseph, and Esther Lin are the co-organizers of Undocupoets, a nonprofit literary organization that advocates for poets who are currently or who were formerly undocumented in the United States. Their work on widening the literary community and inspiring and uplifting forgotten and overlooked voices has won Undocupoets the B&N Writers for Writers award, among other recognitions. Castillo is the author of the Children of the Land and the award-winning Cenzontle...See more

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Janine Joseph, and Esther Lin are the co-organizers of Undocupoets, a nonprofit literary organization that advocates for poets who are currently or who were formerly undocumented in the United States. Their work on widening the literary community and inspiring and uplifting forgotten and overlooked voices has won Undocupoets the B&N Writers for Writers award, among other recognitions. Castillo is the author of the Children of the Land and the award-winning Cenzontle. He holds a B.A. from Sacramento State University and was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. His work has appeared widely in the media, including the New York Times, Paris Review, People Magazine , and the PBS Newshour . He lives in California where he works with incarcerated youth and teaches at the Ashland University Low-Res MFA program. See less