Demetria Martinez

Writer, poet and immigrant rights activist Demetria Martinez was born and raised in Albuquerque. She earned a BA at Princeton University. Martinez’s poems engage spiritual and political themes and the possibility for transformation.
 
Her poetry collections include The Devil’s Workshop (2002), Breathing Between the Lines (1997), and Turning (1987). She is the author of the novella The Block Captain’s Daughter (2012), a recipient of the 2013 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and the novel Mother Tongue (1994), which won a Western States Book Award and is based on part on her 1988 indictment on charges of conspiring to smuggle Central American refugees into the United States. A reporter for Kansas City’s National Catholic Reporter, she was later acquitted on First Amendment grounds. In 2013, she coauthored an ebook with former Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris, These People Want to Work: Immigration Reform, depicting the plight of five undocumented women who reside and work in the United States, followed by an analysis of immigration reform. Her essay collection Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana (2005) won the International Latino Book Award. She has been a recipient of the Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature. With Rosalee Montoya-Read, she co-authored Grandpa’s Magic Tortilla (2010, illustrated by Lisa May Casaus), which won a New Mexico Book Awards’ Young Readers Book Award. Martinez lives in Albuquerque.