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I don’t take a single gesture of positivity that lifts up this book for granted. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it (particularly seeing who was named the winner in the category below mine)—Hijito is the winner of the 2020 International Book Award for Poetry!!!

In the years I spent writing and revising this book, I never imagined something like this.

The full Award Announcement can be found HERE.

Forever grateful to everyone at Platypus Press for believing in this book.

#HijitoBookTour
#LatinxPoetry

In the midst of an overwhelming time of anguish, rage, grief, growth, and, also, possibility, I’m trying to allow space each day for celebration and gratitude (wherever it might emerge).

Today, I’m grateful for Eduardo C. Corral, Martín Espada, and the team at Platypus Press, who believed in my book Hijito, which just won the Foreword INDIES Gold Medal in Poetry.

I recognize how fraught and complicated any award or recognition of an artistic work can be, but I’m, nevertheless, taking a moment to breathe and toast this moment. And, beyond all else, hoping that this book—reckoning with white supremacy, police violence, & parenthood—offers something catalytic & meaningful to this building resistance.

Here are the finalists:

https://www.forewordreviews.com/awards/finalists/2019/poetry/

Here are the medalists in poetry:

https://www.forewordreviews.com/awards/winners/2019/poetry/

My wife and I organized a protest march in our neighborhood. Four days ago, we hatched the idea—hoping for perhaps a handful of people. Instead, nearly 500 showed up, spilling across multiple blocks.

We intentionally did this in our quiet, residential part of town, to both invite and confront an area, like so many others, that assumes a reprieve from the urgency of these demands toward abolition, toward an immediate ceasing of state-sanctioned violence against Black people.

We pulled our kids in a wagon as we walked. Some day, I will tell them this story about their first protest. How they held signs they made and led a long line of comrades.

Hijito is the winner of the 2020 IndieReader Discovery Award for Poetry!! (You can read IndieReader’s interview with me HERE)

I’m humbled beyond words. The journey of this book, since its release nearly 9 months ago, has been more than I could have possibly imagined.

Big thank you to Platypus Press and Eduardo C. Corral for believing in this book.

HERE is the full press announcement about the award.