Since 2021, the Letras Boricuas Fellowship Has Provided More Than $1.5 Million to 60 Puerto Rican Writers on the Island and Across the U.S. Diaspora
(NEW YORK, NY AND SAN JUAN, PR – Tuesday, October 29, 2024) The Mellon Foundation and the Flamboyan Foundation’s Arts Fund announced today the third cohort of Letras Boricuas Fellows, comprising twenty Puerto Rican authors whose work spans a host of diverse literary genres and styles, including the newly added category of playwriting. Fellows will be awarded unrestricted grants of $25,000 each to support their literary practice and provided opportunities to connect and learn across cohorts. The fellowship, born from a years-long collaboration between the two foundations, aims to identify, elevate, and amplify the voices of Puerto Rican writers on the archipelago and across the U.S. diaspora while providing crucial support to preserve Puerto Rico’s rich yet historically underfunded literary tradition.
Since its inception in 2021, the Letras Boricuas Fellowship has awarded a total of $1.5 million in funding to sixty writers, spanning literary genres, geographies, and career stages, with the intention of fostering creativity, career opportunities, and convening an intergenerational community of Boricua writers. Since participating in the fellowship, writers from previous cohorts have gone on to publish and translate new works, secure university tenure-track positions, launch literary businesses, and pursue diverse creative projects.
“After being selected for the Letras Boricuas Fellowship, I was encouraged to pursue—and ultimately win—the Ambroggio Award from The Academy of American Poets. Thanks to the fellowship’s financial support, I knew I could invest in the translation costs regardless of the outcome,” said Margarita Pintado, 2022 Letras Boricuas fellow. “Letras Boricuas was a turning point for me as a writer, not only because of the doors it has opened, but also because of the relationships I have formed with other Puerto Rican writers with whom I hope to collaborate in the future.”
The 2024 Letras Boricuas Fellowship cohort was chosen to reflect the Boricua communities’ diversity and uplift Puerto Rico’s literary heritage. The cohort includes emerging and established writers whose literary practices span fiction, creative nonfiction, children’s literature, poetry (including spoken word), and, for the first time, playwriting. Fellows represent thirteen cities in Puerto Rico and across the U.S. diaspora, and many have persisted in their practices while enduring natural disasters, political turmoil, and limited funding opportunities.
“We are excited to announce this new Letras Boricuas cohort. We know this recognition’s powerful impact because we have seen it up close. Continuing to strengthen the ties between the Puerto Ricans of the archipelago and those of the diaspora with the construction of this literary community encourages us to create more opportunities for these talented writers,” said Carlos Rodríguez Silvestre, Executive Director of Flamboyan Foundation. “Likewise, including the playwright category resulted from the active listening of the two previous cohorts. We congratulate these twenty new fellowship recipients and can’t wait to see the next evolution of this initiative in the coming years.”
“The exceptional writers who make up this third group of fellows demonstrate the broad geographic and aesthetic range of Puerto Rican literary expression today,” said Elizabeth Alexander, President of the Mellon Foundation. “We at Mellon are pleased to welcome them to the Letras Boricuas community, reflecting our ongoing effort to acknowledge and uplift the brilliant cultural life of Puerto Rico and its diaspora.”
The 2024 Letras Boricuas Fellows are:
- Children’s Literature
o José Rabelo – Gurabo, PR
- Creative Nonfiction
o Jaquira Díaz – New York, NY
o Carina del Valle Schorske – New York, NY
o Roxana Domenech Cruz – San Juan, PR
- Fiction
o Christian Ibarra – San Juan, PR
o Richie Narvaez – New York, NY
o Charles Rice-Gonzalez – New York, NY
o Huascar Robles – Los Angeles, CA
o Ana Teresa Toro – San Juan, PR
- Poetry
o Mayda del Valle – Illinois, IL
o Tatiana Figueroa Ramirez – Maryland, MD
o Cindy Jiménez-Vera – Bayamón, PR
o Samuel Medina – San Juan, PR
o Willie Perdomo – New Hampshire, NH
o Alejandra Rosa – Trujillo Alto, PR
o Gaddiel Francisco Ruiz Rivera – Vega Baja, PR
o Roque Raquel Salas Rivera– San Juan, PR
o Vincent Toro – New Jersey, NJ
- Poetry (Spoken Word)
o Rayze Ostolaza – Carolina, PR
- Playwriting
o Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya – Lajas, PR
“As a playwright, I am honored to be in the company of other writers and look forward to welcoming fellow playwrights to join us,” said Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya, inaugural Letras Boricuas playwriting fellow. “I believe that adding playwriting this year as a fellowship category constitutes a significant boost for the discipline in Puerto Rico and the States. It is a needed shift of perception, a triumph of inclusion.”
Fellows were chosen through a two-step nomination and selection process by Committee members, including experienced writers and literary experts Nicolás Kanellos, Magali García Ramis, Caridad de la Luz, Cezanne Cardona, Larry La Fountain-Stokes, Georgina Lázaro León, Rosalba Rolón, Lisette Rolón, and Heriberto Feliciano.
The Letras Boricuas Fellowship is part of the Mellon Foundation’s continued commitment to sustaining and enriching Puerto Rico’s vibrant cultural, knowledge, and memory ecosystems. To date, Mellon’s commitment to this effort totals nearly $90 million.
About the Fellows
Children Literature
José Rabelo is a multifaceted writer, photographer, illustrator, dermatologist, pediatrician, university professor, and reading promoter. Born in Aibonito in July 1963, he was raised in Cayey and now resides in Gurabo. His recent publications include Los mundos de Lonstal: Libro segundo (Editorial Isla Negra, 2024), Otras vidas (ICP, 2024), Villa Polilla (Edelvives Internacional, 2022), 2020: Para verte mejor (Editorial Isla Negra, 2022), Los mundos de Lonstal: Libro primero (Editorial Isla Negra, 2020), La casa de los animales extraños (Anaya Infantil y Juvenil, 2020), and 2063 y otras distopías (Editorial Isla Negra, 2018).
Creative Nonfiction
Jaquira Díaz was born in Puerto Rico and raised between Humacao, Fajardo, and Miami Beach. She is a writer, journalist, producer, and professor. She is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, winner of a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, a Lambda Literary Awards finalist, among others. Ordinary Girls was optioned for television and is currently in development with Gratitude Productions and Killer Films, and Díaz as Co-Executive Producer. Díaz has written for The Atlantic, The Guardian, Time Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and The Fader. Her stories, poems, and essays have been anthologized in The Best American Essays, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Best American Experimental Writing, and The Pushcart Prize anthology.
Carina del Valle Schorske was born in San Rafael, California, in 1987 and has lived in New York City since 2014. Her essays have been published in The Believer, The New Yorker, The Cut, and the New York Times Magazine, where she is a Contributing Writer. Her piece The World According to Bad Bunny was featured on CBS. Her story Dancing Through New York in a Summer of Joy and Grief about grief and belonging on apocalyptic dance floors won a National Magazine Award. As a translator, she focuses on Puerto Rican poetry, especially the work of Marigloria Palma. Her poetry has been featured in various journals and anthologies and supported by fellowships from CantoMundo, MacDowell, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Carina holds a PhD in English & Comparative Literature from Columbia University, and her first book, The Other Island, is forthcoming from Riverhead.
Roxana D. Domenech Cruz was born in San Juan in 1972. She is a writer, professor, and editor born in Cupey, Puerto Rico. Her publications include a series of autoethnographic essays published in Cruce magazine. Her research entitled Mujeres luchadoras: Ecofeminismo, ambientalismo e historiografía puertorriqueña contemporánea desde una perspectiva de género as part of the book Mujeres, historias y sociedades: Latinoamérica, Siglos XVI al XXI (2016); Las mujeres, la justicia socioambiental y la crisis climática: reflexiones en torno al desarrollo sostenible, ecofeminismo e historia contemporánea en Puerto Rico in the book Las universidades iberoamericanas ante los retos de los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible (Editores Tirant lo Blanch, 2023); and A Look at the Struggle for Universal Suffrage in Puerto Rico through the Endeavors of Two Unusual Women, Genara Pagán and Ricarda López de Ramos Casellas as part of the book Women’s Suffrage in the Americas (University of New Mexico Press, 2024).
Fiction
Christian Ibarra Delgado was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1987. He is a writer, journalist, and communicator. He is the author of the storybooks La vida a tiempo (Aventis, 2008), for which he won First Prize in the Story Category of the First Interuniversity Literature Contest of the University of Puerto Rico and an Honorable Mention in 2009 awarded by the Pen Club of Puerto Rico; and Ventanas (Libros AC, 2017), which was included in the list of the best books of the year by the newspaper El Nuevo Día and later brought to the theater by the theater collective La Bicicleta. Some of his stories are part of anthologies in countries such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico or Spain. As a journalist, he has worked for local and international media.
Richie Narváez was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 1965. His mother was from Ponce, and his father was from Corozal. A multi-genre writer, he has published over a hundred short stories, essays, and poems. He is the author of two novels, Hipster Death Rattle and Holly Hernandez and the Death of Disco, which won the Agatha Award and the Anthony Award, and two short story collections, Roachkiller and Other Stories and Noiryorican. He received the BRIO award and was named Artist in Residence by the Bronx Council on the Arts. He lives in New York.
Charles Rice-González was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, and reared in the Bronx. He is a writer, long-time community and LGBTQ activist, and co-founder of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. His debut novel Chulito (Magnus Books 2011), has received nearly a dozen awards and acknowledgments, including the Stonewall Book Awards and the National Book Critics Circle. He co-edited From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction, and his play I Just Love Andy Gibb was published in Blacktino Queer Performance: A Critical Anthology (2016). His writing has been published in When Language Broke Open (2023); Huizache (2023), Obsidian (2023), Aster(ix) (2022), The Big Other (2022), and Teaching Black (2021), among others.
Huáscar Robles is a writer, photographer, and musician born to Puerto Rican parents in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. He grew up in Caguas, Puerto Rico, and now lives in Los Angeles, California. His recent publications are Demonios (La Secta de los Perros, San Juan, Puerto Rico 2023) Puertos príncipes: temblemos todos (La Cipher, DF, Mexico, 2017).
Ana Teresa Toro was born in Aibonito in 1984. She is a Puerto Rican writer and journalist dedicated to exploring, through fiction and nonfiction, topics related to the contemporary history of Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, Latin American, and Latin cultures, colonialism, feminism, racism, the sound of language, nature, and landscape, and the word itself as a tool of social action. She is the author of the books: Flora animal, Cartas al agua, Las narices de los perros, El cuerpo de la abuela, Un cuerpo propio: 40 años de Taller Salud, Vida, patria y verdad: Alejandro García Padilla en conversación con la periodista Ana Teresa Toro and Palabras para un flamboyán, among others. She currently lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she works on fiction, narrative journalism, and memory projects.
Poetry
Mayda Alexandra del Valle was born in Chicago in 1978. She is a writer, performer, mentor, and educator who has been teaching poetry to youth for over ten years. She was raised on the South Side of Chicago, where she now lives in her childhood home. She is the author of A South Side Girl’s Guide to Love & Sex, Tia Chucha Press, 2018.
Tatiana Figueroa Ramírez was born in Mayagüez in 1992. She is a poet and educator who was raised in the United States as the daughter of a soldier. She currently lives in Maryland. Her recent publications include After the Revolution, Até Mais (Deep Vellum, 2024), and ExhumeI (Flowersong Press, 2024).
Cindy Jiménez-Vera was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1978. She grew up in the rural area of El Paraíso, in the Robles neighborhood, adjacent to the Aibonito Guerrero neighborhood in San Sebastián de Las Vegas del Pepino, Puerto Rico. She currently lives in Bayamón. She is a poet, writer, editor, and literary translator. A selection of her publications include: Islandia (Ediciones Aguadulce/Disonante, 2016), No lugar (Ediciones Aguadulce, 2017), Te cambio esta isla: Poemas selectos, ed. bilingual (Ediciones Aguadulce, 2018), Tegucigalpa: bilingual edition (Editorial Gnomo, 2022).
Samuel Medina Miranda was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1985 and currently lives in Santurce, formerly known as Cangrejos, a neighborhood in the capital city of San Juan. He is a writer, editor, book designer and publisher. He studied at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, and Nova Southeastern University in Ponce. He founded Libros AC, a publishing house and bookstore, where he served as director. He won the 2008 University of Puerto Rico’s Interuniversity Poetry Contest and a 2019 SBA Emerging Leaders Graduate of the United States Small Business Administration. He is the author of the poetry collections Sushi (2009) and Láser (2016). He is currently working on his first non-fiction book and a novel.
Willie Perdomo was born in New York City in 1967. He is a writer raised in East Harlem, New York City. Winner of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, the New York City Book Award in Poetry, and the PEN Open Book Award, Perdomo was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award. He is co-editor of the anthology Latínext, and his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Poetry, Washington Post, The Best American Poetry 2019, and African Voices. He is a Lucas Arts Literary Fellow, a core faculty member at VONA/Voices of our Nation Writing Workshop and teaches at Phillips Exeter Academy. His recent publications include The Crazy Bunch (Penguin Random House, 2019) and Smoking Lovely: The Remix (Haymarket Books, 2021). He currently lives in Exeter, New Hampshire.
Alejandra ‘Al’ Rosa was born in Santurce in 1994. They are a poet, mover, performer, theater worker, researcher, educator, teacher, playwright, producer, and visual artist. Alejandra was raised in Carolina, Puerto Rico, and lives in San Juan.
Gaddiel Francisco Ruiz Rivera was born in San Juan in 1991. He is a writer, editor, professor, critic and artist. His recent publications include Lastre jurásico and Ojodeagua in Breve Antología de Poetas Puertorriqueños y Puertorriqueñas de los siglos XXI y XXII (2020), Difusión (Clara Beter ediciones 2020), Aplaudir cuando aterrice, review of Clap When you Land by Elizabeth Acevedo (Demoliendo Hoteles, revista foto-literaria 2022), De raíz (Editorial Pulpo 2022) and Teoría del ave en mano (Gnomo Literario 2023).
Roque Raquel Salas Rivera was born in Mayagüez in 1985. He is a poet, editor, educator, and translator of trans experience who grew up between the U.S. and Puerto Rico. He currently resides in Puerto Rico. His recent poetry collections include lo terciario/ the tertiary (2nd ed., Noemi, 2019), while they sleep (under the bed is another country) (Birds LLC, 2019), x/ex/exis: poemas para la nación / poems for the nation (University of Arizona, 2021), and antes que isla es volcán/ before island is volcano (Beacon, 2022), among others.
Vincent Toro is a poet, playwright, performer, and professor from New York City with familial roots in Juncos and Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. He is the author of three poetry collections: Hivestruck (Penguin Random House, 2024), Tertulia (Penguin Random House, 2020), and Stereo.Island. Mosaic. (Ahsahta, 2016), which won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. His poetry and prose have been published in dozens of magazines and journals and anthologized in Saul Williams’ CHORUS, Puerto Rico En Mi Corazon, and Best American Experimental Writing 2015, among others. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Rider University and serves as a poetry editor for Kweli Literary Journal.
Poetry (Spoken Word)
Rayze Michelle Ostolaza Oquendo was born in San Juan in 1994. She is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, writer, actress, dancer, cultural manager, and workshop leader. She was raised in the Residencial Torres de Sabana in Carolina and currently lives in that municipality. Rayze hosts Tacos y Poesía and Dos poetas y una barra. She will soon self-publish her collection of poems, Retazos de cielo. Her poems “Mi País,” “Ser puertorriqueña,” and “Desahogo Revolucionario” have reached over 60,000 interactions online.
Playwriting
Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya was born in Philadelphia in 1965. He is a writer, editor, artist-researcher, and educator who grew up in Lajas, Puerto Rico. His recent plays include Hagiografías III, Casa Cruz de la Luna at the Center of Fine Arts Santurce, 2017; Fausto Angleró, Teatro IATI, New York, 2017; The Marquis de Sade is Afraid of the Sea, INTAR Theater, New York, 2018; Cerulean House, Casa Cruz de la Luna production at the Loisaida Festival, New York, 2019; Las Facultades, Casa Cruz de la Luna, 2020-21; Unbounding [sic] Prometheus, CultureHub at La Mama, New York, 2023. Aravind lives between Lajas, New York, and San Juan.
###
About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.
About Flamboyan Foundation
Guided by the belief that all children deserve the opportunity to live a fulfilling life, the Flamboyan Foundation works to ensure every child in the US and Puerto Rico receives an outstanding education. In Washington, DC, Flamboyan is accelerating student learning by helping educators and school systems transform their relationships with families. In Puerto Rico, Flamboyan is ensuring students are reading in Spanish on grade level by third grade while building a thriving philanthropic and nonprofit sector, which includes arts and cultural organizations. http://www.flamboyanfoundation.org
About Flamboyan Arts Fund
The Flamboyan Arts Fund is a partnership between Flamboyan Foundation, Lin-Manuel Miranda, his family, and the Broadway musical Hamilton to preserve, amplify, and sustain the arts in Puerto Rico. Since Hurricane María devastated the island, many artists and arts organizations like museums, theaters, arts education programs, and music venues are at risk of cutting back services or closing. The fund supports all facets of the arts community, including music, theater, visual arts, dance, literature, and youth arts education to ensure that the arts and culture continue to flourish during the rebuilding of Puerto Rico.