Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was born in Zacatecas, Mexico. He moved to the United States at five years of age.

He received a B.A. from Sacramento State University and was the first undocumented student to earn an MFA from the University of Michigan.

Castillo's poems and essays can be found in BuzzFeed, Drunken Boat, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Jubilat, Muzzle Mag, New England Review, The Paris American, and Southern Humanities Review among others.

Along with C.D. Wright, Castillo has translated the poems of Mexican poet Marcelo Uribe.

Castillo's manuscript, Cenzóntle, was selected by Brenda Shaughnessy as the 2017 winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, from BOA Editions. A Pushcart nominee, Castillo has received fellowships from CantoMundo, the Squaw Valley Writer’s Workshop, and the Vermont Studio Center. He has taught as a resident artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida.

• Cenzóntle, (2018) BOA Editions

Castillo was a founder, with poets Javier Zamora and Christopher Soto (AKA Loma), of the Undocupoets campaign which eliminated citizenship requirements from major first poetry book prizes in the United States.