Graywolf Press Partners with Letras Latinas on New Latinx Anthology
Graywolf Press is partnering with Letras Latinas to publish a new anthology of Latinx poetry. We Come from Everything: Poetry for the 21st Century will gather twenty-five poets who have not yet published more than one full-length book of poetry with the goal of highlighting a representative swath of Latinx poets of this moment, especially those with a sense of identity that is bound to multiplicity and capaciousness. Anthology co-editors Diannely Antigua and Laura Villareal further explained the anthology’s focus and their hopes for it. “What distinguishes this generation of writers is the fluidity and the remarkable hyphenations and additions in their sense of identity. It’s a generation of writers with their consciousness bound in multiple countries, cultures, languages, and understanding of themselves that, at times, may feel fragmented, but is stronger at its intersections,” said Villareal. “Our hope is that this anthology will further complicate long-standing narrow and myopic ideals of what Latinx literature looks like to provide a panoramic view of its breadth and depth. With this anthology, we want to celebrate the outstanding wealth of talent of our community in this golden era of Latinx poetics,” Antigua added. The collaboration with Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, emerged from talks that began in Minneapolis last May.
“Throughout our two-decade history, Letras Latinas’s bread and butter has been partnerships, whether for events or publications. We’ve been lucky enough to work with a number of presses already and so it’s gratifying that my initial conversation with Carmen and Jeff helped this project along. These talks were possible, I think, because of our pre-established ties and they underscore the importance of relationships. And I can’t stress enough how thrilled I am that Diannely and Laura are at the helm, not to mention the crucial role of Graywolf’s Assistant Editor, Brittany Torres Rivera,” said Francisco Aragón, who directs Letras Latinas.
This collaboration also exemplifies Graywolf’s mission to publish “risk-taking, visionary writers who transform culture through literature.” To that end, Torres Rivera and Graywolf’s Director and Publisher Carmen Giménez will serve as editorial advisors on the anthology. To support the editors’ curatorial vision, they will offer guidance toward creating a balance and effective arrangement of voices and poetic styles. They will also serve as resources as Antigua and Villareal work with poets to ensure that the anthology is representative of the poetic caliber for which Graywolf strives.
“In addition to selecting these poets’ work, we are helping shepherd it into the world,” said Giménez. She described the creative exchange between editor and poet as an important ethos for the anthology. “An editor can see a poem in ways that an author can’t. Editing is a gift we can offer, especially considering that many of the contributing poets may not have worked with an editor before.”
We Come from Everything: Poetry for the 21st Century is slated for a Winter 2027 publication. To learn more about forthcoming Graywolf titles, visit https://www.graywolfpress.org/.
Laura Villareal is the author of Girl’s Guide to Leaving (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022) which was awarded Texas Institute of Letters’s John A. Robert Johnson Award for a First Book of Poetry and the Writers’ League of Texas Book Award. She is currently an associate with Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies.
Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. She is the author of the collections Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019), which was the winner of a 2020 Whiting Award, and Good Monster (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). She received her MFA at NYU and currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the University of New Hampshire as the Nossrat Yassini Poet in Residence.