María Fernanda at a retreat she created for herself.
“We have to protect our storytellers. In a world where people are moving so fast, they don’t want to be taken away. We don’t realize that we want to slow down. María Fernanda and her work remind us to do so.”
—Terry Lovette, Math + Music
María Fernanda (she/hers) writes full time. Her work explores the intimacy of sisterhood, the anchor of intergenerational coexistence, and grief.
A published contributor of the Library of Congress, she is the founder of an independent series a poetry garden, where Black poets and gardeners discuss their creative and historic connections to gardens.
Awarded The Norma Elia Cantú Award in Creative Writing, María Fernanda has received literary appointments from The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), The Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the DC Commission on the Arts. She is a Callaloo fellow.
María Fernanda’s poems appear in the Hill Rag, The Rumpus, The Breakbeat Poets, Cheryl Clarke's born in a bed of good lessons inspired by Lucille Clifton, Cave Canem's Dogbytes, and elsewhere.
She has appeared as a guest speaker and moderator in conversations at MoMa PS1, Lincoln Center Education, The Broadway League’s Annual Spring Road Conference, several film festivals, and more. Fun fact: for her first public performance with an audience, she opened for poet Nikky Finney as part of an anonymous poetry submission pool.
“[María Fernanda’s] activism and artwork offer various insights into the question of justice. It was important to me to gather a group of writers whose craft extends to multiple genres, and who are active literary citizens. .”
— Maya Marshall, Haymarket Books for Denton Record-Chronicle