The Poetry Project

Yesenia Montilla

Yesenia Montilla is featured in a square-cropped black-and-white portrait in profile that is softly lit by natural lighting. The photo is cropped from the shoulders up. She is wearing long pendant earrings and her hair frames her face.

Yesenia Montilla is an Afro-Latina poet & a daughter of immigrants. She received her MFA from Drew University in Poetry & Poetry in translation. She is a CantoMundo graduate fellow and a 2020 NYFA fellow. Her work has been published in Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast and in Best of American Poetry 2021 and 2022. Her first collection The Pink Box is published by Willow Books & was longlisted for a PEN Open Book award. Her second collection Muse Found in a Colonized Body published by Four Way Books in 2022 was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. She lives in Harlem, NY.