Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox (University of Pittsburgh, 2016), winner of the 2015 AWP Donald Hall Poetry Prize and 2016 Florida Book Award bronze medal. She has received poetry fellowships from Kundiman, the Knight Foundation and the American Literary Translators Association, and her work has appeared in Best New Poets, Best Small Fictions, The New York Times and elsewhere. www.marcicalabretta.
Every December, my mother-in-law hosts a Christmas cookie party. The rules are simple: Bring a batch of homemade cookies and at least 20 copies of the recipe to share. After lunch, everyone gets a box to fill with cookies and collect recipes. This is serious business. These women have become mothers and then grandmothers around this dessert table. The number of cookies at this party has risen into the hundreds. These women whip out delicious, tried-and-true recipes passed down by their own mothers and grandmothers, while I ran out of cookie recipes within the first two years of marriage.
Marci Cancio-Bello: You grew up in the slam community, and your debut poetry collection Cut to Bloom is an artifact of text.
This April, in honor of National Poetry Month, the poetry section is pleased to feature the work of four extraordinary Asian American writers in collaboration with Undocupoets. Below you will find a table of contents with links to each piece.
— Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, Poetry Editor
Introduction
This April, in honor of National Poetry Month, the poetry section is featuring the work of 10 extraordinary Asian American high school writers. Their poems celebrate their identities and experiences navigating the complexities of growing up in America today. Below you will find a table of contents with links to each piece. We hope this incredible group of writers inspires you as much as they have inspired us.
— Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, Poetry Editor
Introduction