For National Hispanic Heritage Month, observed annually from September 15 to October 15, we asked our members to share with us some of the literature they recommend reading in celebration. (Learn more about National Hispanic Heritage Month here.)
Fiction
New Vessel Press | 2022
ISBN: 9781954404083
The seventh installment in the Very Christmas series includes “mouthwatering Nochebuena meals, mysterious felines, multi-colored boxes, marvelous sweet rolls, and many a bedside tale.”
Dreams and Other Ailments / Suenos y otros achaques by Teresa Bevin
Self-translated from the Spanish by Bevin
Gival Press | 2001
ISBN: 978-1928589136
In Bevin’s short fiction collection, “the narrator—a little girl—provides a descriptive panorama that mixes the living with the dead and dream with reality so that boundaries of perception become blurred.”
Ocotillo Dreams by Melinda Palacio
Bilingual Press / Editorial Bilingüe | 2011
ISBN: 978-1931010764
Set in Chandler, Arizona, “during the city’s infamous 1997 migrant sweeps,” this novel “brings to life the social issues that arise from border policy and economic inequity.”
The Voice of Blood by Gabriela Rábago Palafox
Translated from the Spanish by M. Elizabeth Ginway and Enrique Muñoz-Mantas
University of Tampa Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-59732-223-2
This collection of speculative short stories “intertwines themes of identity, desire, trauma, and transformation with a haunting gothic sensibility.”
The Ballad of Gato Guerrero by Manuel Ramos
Arte Público Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-55885-992-0
Originally published in 1994, this second installment in the Luis Montez Mystery Series “takes readers on a wild ride through Denver’s mean streets and deadly encounters with young gangbangers.”
Quantum Nightmares by Jose M Rodriguez
Flare Books | 2025
ISBN: 9781963511215
This collection of dystopian stories “contains the nuggets of bizarre psychological truth that help explain today’s divisive United States, where myth collides with belief and fact is hard to find.”
Urban Folk Tales: Stories by Y. Rodriguez
Read Furiously | 2023
ISBN: 9798986119908
Inspired by oral storytelling traditions, these short stories explore “the miraculous and the mundane scenes that play up and down the avenues of New York City.”
They Hold Grudges by Diana Rojas
Arte Público Press | 2026
ISBN: 979-8-89375-042-3
In this psychological novel centered on a family, “gossip and whispers swirl, unleashing doubts, paranoia and betrayal, while [the main character] Rob embarks on a desperate quest to clear his name.”
Nonfiction & Multi-Genre Works
The Hurricane Book: A Lyric History by Claudia Acevedo-Quiñones
Rose Metal Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-941628-31-7
In this debut, Acevedo-Quiñones “pieces together the story of her family and Puerto Rico using a captivating combination of historical facts, poems, maps, overheard conversations, and flash essays.”
The Legend of Dave Bradley by S. Atzeni
Read Furiously | 2022
ISBN: 9781737175889
Set in a supermarket at the Jersey Shore, this cross-genre book “celebrates the horrors that only exist in customer service.”
Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, A Chicana Punk Story by Alice Bag
Feral House | 2011
ISBN: 9781936239122
This coming-of-age memoir chronicles “a life of many crossed boundaries, from East L.A.’s musica ranchera to Hollywood’s punk rock; from a violent male-dominated family to female-dominated transgressive rock bands.”
Gilded Revival by Jennine Capó Crucet and Crystal Pearl Molinary
Burrow Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781941681398
This collaborative collection of fiction and photography “explores the act of adornment as a form of baptism and renewal; as protection; as protest; as self-designed spirituality manifest.”
Naming the Body: A Queer Woman’s Restorative Mapping of the Self by María Mínguez Arias
Translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers
Mouthfeel Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-957840-50-5
This hybrid memoir in translation “celebrates and reclaims a queer woman’s uprooted, mothering, ailing body and an erased identity through memory and language.”
Porque Estamos Aquí by Jessica Nydia Pabón-Colón
The Feminist Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781558613607
This anthology of essays and cross-genre writing “maps Boricua feminisms of the past, the present, and the future, defining what it means to be a ‘bad subject’ of US empire.”
CHABÓCHI DOLL by féi iká shumarí
Abode Press | 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9955832-0-2
In this essay collection, shumarí turns “womanhood, citizenship, and disability on their head” while “negotiating the radicalness of her joy and two-spirited embodiment, when confronted with a brain tumor diagnosis.”
Books as Drinking Buddies: A Book of Re-Readings by Gary Soto
Limberlost Press | 2026
ISBN: 979-8-2954-8346-2
In this book of humor essays, Soto “re-reads books by Charles Darwin, Claire Tomalin, Pablo Neruda, Oscar Hijuelos,” and more and “has literary opinions that might extend beyond his own local 94708 zip code.”
Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child by Elva Treviño Hart
Bilingual Press / Editorial Bilingüe | 1999
ISBN: 978-0927534819
This book “chronicles the life of a child growing up in a family of Mexican-American migrant farm workers who traveled between Texas and Minnesota.”
Brown Ink | 2026
ISBN: 978-1963245028
This collection of twenty-five essays is “both a love letter to teaching and a challenge to the sanitized mythology of the bonneted schoolmistress of the one-room schoolhouse.”
Poetry
FlowerSong Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1963245950
Acosta’s collection explores “the reactions wildness inspires, noting how women and queer folk are treated and the effects of suppression, alongside the similar effects of parallel taming in nature and within the mental health system.”
Material by Ana Maria Caballero
Trio House Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781949487732
In this collection, Caballero “delivers honest, edgy, and exquisitely crafted explorations of how we seek to balance the multiple roles and responsibilities that call to us.”
the past is a jean jacket by Cloud Delfina Cardona
Hub City Press | 2025
ISBN: 9798885740593
The speaker of these poems “explores their gender through sex and relationships, searches for belonging in their family lineage, and copes with depression using movies, indie bands, cigarettes, and Tumblr.”
All Were Limones by Luisa Caycedo-Kimura
The Word Works | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-94458589-1
According to Jennifer Oakes, the voice in these poems “is one that both sings and scours, wades into toughness to get to vulnerability and then doubles back to double down—all while lifting music from language and beauty from rubble.”
Migrations & Other Exiles by Letisia Cruz
Lost Horse Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-8-9865715-4-6
According to Dzvinia Orlowsky, in these poems “the speaker attempts to shape an unidentified other into a graceful swan-like survivor only to renege.”
The Parachutist by Jose Hernandez Diaz
Sundress Publications | 2025
ISBN: 978-1951979720
Diaz’s collection captures “the tension between inherited struggles and present-day privilege, translating the untold stories of his ancestors into vivid, surreal verses.”
Indifferent Cities by Ángel García
Tupelo Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1961209329
Indifferent Cities “traverses both distance and time to reconcile the most confounding reality of family: our people, sometimes, are the people we know least.”
Canciones para una sola cuerda / Songs for a Single String by Jesus Gardea
Translated from the Spanish by Robert L. Giron
Gival Press | 2002
ISBN: 978-1928589099
Gardea’s bilingual collection of love poems “evokes the quality and forms of ‘cante hondo,’ emphasizing the emotional interplay of human voice and guitar.”
REDWORK by Laurie Ann Guerrero
Autumn House Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781637681244
Guerrero’s fifth collection is “a meditation on a woman’s role in work and family, ancestral wisdom, and the subversive nature of female art.”
Planeta Passport by Juan Felipe Herrera
Mouthfeel Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-957840-49-9
Herrera’s latest collection “moves like riffs, fragments, declarations, and disruptions, blending lyric intensity with cultural commentary in all its forms: personal, political, and constructed.”
banana [ ] by Paul Hlava Ceballos
University of Pittsburgh Press | 2022
ISBN: 9780822966937
These poems “reveal the extractive relationship the United States has with the Americas and its people through poetic portraits of migrants, family, and personal memories.”
She Who Eats Tourists by Atalaya Magdalena
fifth wheel press | 2024
ISBN: 9798988832188
This collection is “essentially various attempts to write one kind of poem, a poem that will feel, as a consolation, like justice to read.”
Embers of Exile by Francis Mateo
Get Fresh Books Publishing | 2026
ISBN: 9798244127792
These poems “delve into the pervasive solitude and uncertainty entrenched in transnationalism and urban life.”
How to Survive an Asthma Attack in a Climate Apocalypse by Osmani R. Ochoa
Abode Press | 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9955832-1-9
This poetry chapbook for “readers who carry deep political conviction, live with chronic illness, or know the ache of loss and longing” is a “meditation on being human, and how breath—and breathlessness—reminds us that we are alive.”
Querida by Nathan Xavier Osorio
University of Pittsburgh Press | 2024
ISBN: 9780822948377
In this collection, “a choir of speakers navigate the fraught inheritance of memory frayed by the generational trauma of migration, coloniality, and the exploitative labor of late-stage capitalism.”
A Ten Peso Burial for Which Truth I Sign by Gabriel Palacios
Fonograf Editions | 2024
ISBN: 979-8-9875890-4-5
In his debut collection, Palacios “reckons with the cultural heritage of the Southwest border region by sifting through its detritus.”
Brutal Companion by Ruben Quesada
Barrow Street | 2024
ISBN: 9781962131032
Quesada’s collection “probes the brutality and beauty found in relationships with lovers, friends, family, and the self.”
CavanKerry Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-960327-20-8
“Painting a vivid and fraught portrait of the North Bronx,” Orange “unflinchingly highlights and confronts the contradictions at the heart of love, divorce, gender, religion, and community.”
El Rey of Gold Teeth by Reyes Ramirez
Hub City Press | 2023
ISBN: 9798885740197
Ramirez’s collection “breaks open notions of destiny, in humorous and devastating ways, to reimagine the past and present a new future where lack transforms to abundance.”
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez by Iliana Rocha
Tupelo Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1946482648
This collection “chronicles an obsession with the 1971 unsolved murder of Rocha’s grandfather while interrogating the true crime genre, tabloid culture, immigrant identity,” and more.
At the River by Esteban Rodríguez
Fonograf Editions | 2026
ISBN: 9781964499727
At the River “journeys to the U.S.-Mexican border in deep south Texas, where our narrator, under his grandmother’s watchful eye, contemplates the geography, people, and cultural characteristics that define the region.”
In Inheritance of Drowning by Dorsía Smith Silva
CavanKerry Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-960327-07-9
This collection “confronts the ‘drowning’ of BIPOC communities as they are displaced, exploited, and robbed of their identities and witnesses their resistance and resilience.”
Anthem of Evaporated Tears by Xavier Valcárcel de Jesús
Translated from the Spanish by Roque Raquel Salas Rivera
Cardboard House Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-945720-39-0
This poetry collection inspired by Virgil’s Aenid “turns to face the violence at the heart of domesticity and gender, which is reconfigured by the poetic voice and his mother.”
Declaration of Independence by Ezequiel Zaidenwerg
Translated to the Spanish by Hernán Bravo Varela
Cardboard House Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-945720-44-4
This documentary poem, “constructed exclusively from the United States Declaration of Independence, pits the founding archive against the somatic immediacy of a body politic.”
Literary Magazines
Architectures of FuturoPasados
Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing | 2025
Mānoa’s 2025 issue—featuring Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, Aerik Francis, Eloisa Amezcua, Daniel Borzutzky, and more—includes poems, essays, short stories, and visual artworks that “offer forceful perceptions of Latinx identity from across the Americas and the Caribbean.”
“Marta’s Blues” by Sara Campos
Adi Magazine | 2026
This story begins, “Already, she was in a mood. The surly guard didn’t help.”
“In Transit” by Daniella Castillo Vasquez
Callaloo | 2026
Castillo Vasquez’s story is featured in Volume 44, Issue 3 of Callaloo.
Chingon Aesthetics Research Institute: LAREDOCORE
Infrarrealista Review | 2024
Guest edited by Dee Lalo Garcia, this folio features nineteen poets and writers from Laredo, Texas, including Xiomarra Milan, Michael Casso, Karen Gaytan, and more.
“The Average Weight Of Your Organs” by Ester Cuervos
ALOCASIA | 2024
This poem begins, “Are you writing this down? Yes. Alright, then get this: the brain is 1388 grams. Got it? Yes, got it. The flowers inside are: azalea, begonia, butterfly bush pink delight and dahlia.”
“Almost Nothing I Wrote Exists” by Jesús Jank Curbelo
Adi Magazine | 2026
This essay begins, “One morning in the spring of 2019, I disappeared a little. I was at home in Havana, having coffee and googling my name as if I were flipping through a photo album…”
“Aperture” by Steven Espada Dawson
The Hopkins Review | 2026
This poem begins, “Five a.m.—we wake to the ignition of a ’94 Cavalier / parked in the garage where we sleep. Exhaust climbs / the dividing wall like ivy…”
Three Poems by Jonathan Fletcher
Philly Chapbook Review | 2025
The poem “When Easter Fell on the Same Date as Transgender Day of Visibility” begins, “If today there’s crucifixion, / it is in the shape of a bill, more than 500 / in number, / each anti-LGBTQ.”
beestung | 2025
This poem begins, “Love, our bigness is a gift. We are massively magnificent as we are. / Told to exercise our bodies as if demons & I am so tired of running / to lose myself.”
“Two Faiths, Coagulating on an Oilcloth Cover (Caked With Pork Grease)” by Violeta Garza
West Trestle Review | 2025
This poem begins, “The night before su fiesta de los quince, / mi prima Lily placed her palm over her narrow forehead / to disguise her distress.”
“Exhibition Notes: Portrait of Arapaima at the All-Night Diner” by Loren Maria Guay
beestung | 2025
This poem begins, “Oil upon oil. The arapaima is dressed for a night on the town: spangled slab of muscle, scales laced with neon. A fry cook is hollering Drown the kids!”
“Cemento y adobo” by Marcy Rae Henry
West Trestle Review | 2025
This poem begins, “it’s easier to wait / amid sage and blue grama / where you can watch a round red ball of gas / slipping below the horizon…”
ALOCASIA | 2025
The poem “Los saguaros are being destroyed” begins, “The sun is needed and also dangerous / Beneath it people hide things for others / en la sombra de saguaros…”
Hispanic Heritage Month Playlist
Shō Poetry Journal | 2026
This playlist features five poets recently published in Shō Poetry Journal, including Carlos Andrés Gómez, Sophie Kaiser Rojas, Jenny Sadre-Orafai, Jacob Herrera Spears, and Virgil Suárez.
ANMLY | 2026
This poem begins, “that all the world be a spindling arm, where weapons spin so fast they become stars— / stars, where weapons spin so fast; they are no longer tactile…”
“Ripe for Abuse: ICE Threatens Farmworkers” by Luis Feliz Leon
The Drift | 2025
This essay begins, “In March, Alfredo ‘Lelo’ Juarez, a farmworker who helped form the independent union Familias Unidas por la Justicia, was arrested by ICE…”
“Something Terrible” by Stephanie Macias
Epiphany | 2026
Macias’s story is featured in Issue 36 of Epiphany.
“Say Anything” by Madari Pendas
Oyster River Pages | 2024
This story begins, “You chase your cousins, Miraflor and Tony, around the royal poinciana until you’re dizzy and stumbling over your own light-up sneakers.”
ANMLY | 2018
This anthology features “45 contemporary Puerto Rican poets, both emerging and established, writing in both English and Spanish, living both on la isla and in the diaspora, afro-boricua, white, mixed, indigenx, and of all genders.”
“A Haibun for White Center, Washington” by Vincent Antonio Rendoni
Tahoma Literary Review | 2025
This poem begins, “Smell that? Refried beans. Sorry to say, the secret ingredient is lard. Better watch your step. Human / or animal, I can’t discern. Ignore the boards on windows.”
“A Pillow Made of Knuckles” by Gerard Robledo
Oyster River Pages | 2021
This poem begins, “Holding my breath, I check for warm drool. / Are your eyes still rolling under their lids, / like searchlights draped with thin skins?”
“Four Movements on Ángela María Dávila Malavé’s animal fiero y tierno” by Giovannai Rosa
The Hopkins Review | 2026
This cross-genre piece begins, “How to move through time? I was begging. Spanish returning me to Sundays filled with mami mopping, singing with the stereo spilling Salsa…”
“Mexican Ted” by Eric Salinas Nebel
The SportScribe Literary Magazine | 2026
This story begins, “A passenger train cut across the rolling hills of Southern California. The sun defied the time of year, bearing down a golden sheen across the landscape.”
The Drift | 2024
This essay begins, “In February, before the Democrats swapped candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump separately visited Texas on the same day to present their respective plans for cracking down on border crossing.”
Philly Chapbook Review | 2026
The poem “Magnolia Pantoum” begins, “The magnolias here bloom without asking permission. / I was not consulted about this landscape or its rules. / Every morning the white insists on itself, enormous.”
