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MFA Creative Nonfiction Writing

María Luisa Arroyo Cruzado

Instructor: Reading and Writing About Race, Culture and Identity; Summer Field Seminar

Boricua poet and feminist intersectional educator María Luisa Arroyo Cruzado’s most recent publications include Landscapes: photos and poems (2023) and Resistencia: Resilience: essays and poems (2023). Thought Here Would Cure Me of There, a poetry memoir, will be published by Lily Poetry Review in 2024. Her 2018 collection of poems, Destierro Means More than Exile is María’s tribute to 32 women poets who inspire her. Gathering Words: Recogiendo Palabras (Bilingual Review Press, 2008) is
her first collection. Her writing is widely anthologized in publications such The Art of Touch: A Collection of Prose and Poetry from the Pandemic and Beyond (2023), Boricua en la Luna (2019), Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief (2017), and Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (2013). In 2024, María will compile, edit, and publish an anthology of writing from diverse genres by female and nonbinary writers of color under her literary imprint MultiCreative Wisdom.

For 15+ years, María has joyfully offered poetry workshops in the community and online, mentored many poets through their respective writing and publishing journeys, and curated numerous in-person poetry and multi-genre readings. She was commissioned by the Boston Opera Collaborative to write poems for their 2022 “Love in the Time of...” opera performance and by the Boston-based Mel King Institute for their 2021 annual fundraiser. In recognition for her community engagement as a poet, she was named Springfield’s Inaugural Poet Laureate (2014- 2016), and received New England Public Radio’s Arts & Humanities Award in 2019.

María holds degrees from Colby College (BA), Tufts University (MA), and Pine Manor College (MFA). As a Clark Diversity Fellow, María is pursuing her PhD in Comparative Literature at Binghamton University, where her study of and lived experience in four cultures and their languages: American, Puerto Rican, German, and Iranian continue to inform her poems and her future academic scholarship in world literature.

Please visit the MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing program page to learn about the curriculum, faculty, program options, and more.