Carmen Boullosa Wins Prestigious Award

Professor Boullosa is the winner of Casa de América’s Spanish Poetry Award

Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York is excited to announce that on October 2^nd, Professor Carmen Boullosa was declared the winner of the XIX Premio Casa de América de Poesía Americana, a prestigious award for the best volume of Spanish poetry in the Americas.

Distinguished Lecturer Carmen Boullosa is the author of over thirty works, including fifteen collections of poetry, eighteen novels, and two short story collections. She has previously been the recipient of the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize in 1989, the Café Gijón Award in 2008, and the Rosalia de Castro Award in 2018. She is currently teaching a Macaulay course titled The Mouth: Spanish-Speaking Women Writers from the 1500s to the 1970s, a class that explores the extraordinary array of powerful and vocal women across different times, backgrounds, and cultures.

“It’s a joy and an honor to have been awarded the Casa de América de Poesía Americana prize,” says Boullosa. The award is meant to encourage Spanish poetry in the Americas, exploring unpublished and innovative poetic works from different perspectives. “It is gratifying,” says Professor Boullosa, “that the distinguished jurors saw fit to praise [El Tierro, la Caos, la Espeja] as being ‘of a strong personality with the double capacity to play with language and use it as a mirror of Mexican reality, sometimes violent, with memorable verses and reflections of great depth.’” The winner also receives five thousand euros and the publication of the winning work by the Editorial Visor Libros.

“Carmen’s most recent prestigious award underscores how fortunate we are at Macaulay to have on our faculty Mexico’s leading poet, novelist, and playwright,” says Macaulay Dean Mary Pearl. “She creates constant, exciting opportunities for our students to immerse themselves in the art and literature of Latin America.” The Chancellor of CUNY, Félix V. Matos Rodriguez, also took to Twitter to congratulate her: “Congrats to Carmen Boullosa for receiving this prestigious honor for her poetry! ¡Estamos muy orgullosos [We are very proud]!” Professor Boullosa will be traveling to Madrid this November for her award.