Marisa Morales Lopez

Marisa Morales Lopez grew up between two kitchens and two languages, which she says is the only writing education she ever needed. She began with poems, kept a notebook of single lines for years, and only later discovered that some of those lines wanted to be stories instead.

Her first book, Reminiscence, gathers poems and short prose about the houses of childhood and the words carried out of them. It was written slowly, mostly early in the morning, and arranged as one long act of remembering rather than a set of separate pieces.

Alongside the poetry she writes flash fiction — stories of a few hundred words, built to be read in a single breath — and gentle stories for children, in which birds, umbrellas, and very slow snails tend to have the last word.

She reads at small venues, visits schools and libraries, and answers her own post. If you'd like her to visit, or to read something new before it appears here, the letter list is the best place to start.