About
Letisia Cruz is a Cuban-American writer and artist. She is the author of Bigwig's Illustrated Guide To Birds (Tolsun Books, forthcoming 2024), Migrations & Other Exiles (Lost Horse Press, 2023), selected by Dzvinia Orlowsky as winner of the 2022 Idaho Prize for Poetry, and The Lost Girls Book of Divination (Tolsun Books, 2018). She is the recipient of a 2022 artist grant from the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance and was selected as a 2022 Dali Dozen Emerging Artist for her project Rituales: An Exploration of Faith in the Caribbean. Her writing and artwork have appeared in [PANK], Ninth Letter, The Acentos Review, Gulf Stream, Saw Palm, Third Coast, Duende, Moko, 300 Days of Sun, and Black Fox Literary Magazine, among others. She is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA program and lives in Saint Petersburg, Florida with her partner and their three cats.
Artist Statement
My illustrations are rendered primarily in pen and ink on paper. I am inspired by strong, trailblazing women who push boundaries, forge their own paths, and define for themselves what it means to achieve success. I am also inspired by the take-no-shit attitude of the 1990s and transformative self-expression made possible through art, poetry, and music. My work often depicts tattooed women straddling light and dark, gazing into their own abyss, and defining their sense of self. Much of my work is infused with elements of nature and centers around the seasons, the passing of time, and the theme of rebirth.
MIGRATIONS & OTHER EXILES
Winner of the Idaho Prize for Poetry 2022
Selected by Final Judge Dzvinia Orlowsky
With a Bachelardian dreaminess and a poetic language that is both sensuous and incisive, Migrations and Other Exiles questions the contradictory nature of human love. Right from the opening poem, “Promise,” the speaker attempts to shape an unidentified other into a graceful swan-like survivor only to renege: “I carved her neck long/so that when the rains came / she might hold it above /water. You will not drown, / I promised her. But then her/ mouth and eyes filled and I/let them. What begins with hope, complex and lucent—a flight of spirit—often ends with the rarity or inability to fly: “Remember that one time / we flew? Like we were birds/ with thrift-store wings.” Other times, it’s the literal, hard-hitting world of self-harming burns and gunshots that violate the boundaries of self. Precise and elegant, redemptive in its musicality and stunning imagery, Migrations and Other Exiles is a remarkable, stand-out, collection.
—Dzvinia Orlowsky, Final Judge for the Idaho Prize 2022
