About the Series
The Alta California Chapbook Series is edited by Emma Trelles. She is the daughter of Cuban immigrants, an Academy of America Poets Fellow, and the author of Tropicalia (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize and a finalist for Foreword-Indies poetry book of the year. (Photo by Regina Reese).
The Alta California Chapbook series is published in partnership with Letras Latinas, the literary initiative of the Institute for Latino Studies at University of Notre Dame. The prize is awarded to Latine poets residing in the US. Selected manuscripts are published in bilingual edition by Gunpowder Press. The series translator is Alexandra Lytton Regalado and its Spanish style editor is Josué Andrés Moz.
2025: Michelle Moncayo
Here, on this 76L by Michelle Moncayo was selected by Richard Blanco as winner of the Alta California Chapbook Prize and is available now from Gunpowder Press.
“Michelle Moncayo’s poems burn strong with authentic feeling and personal icons swirling with wings, food as a form of prayer, and the poignant music of heritage. There is a radiating center to this collection, one that speaks to the power of where we come from and how we carry our origin stories with us in painful and beautiful ways. This is a voice that spoke to me with intimacy and truth.”
—Richard Blanco
Final Judge, Alta California Chapbook Prize
Michelle Moncayo is a Dominican/Ecuadorian poet in New Jersey. Her work explores diaspora, queer identity, and mental/physical illness. She graduated with her MFA from Randolph College. She has received fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, SPACE at Ryder Farm, Vermont Studio Center, Sundress Academy for the Arts, CantoMundo, and VONA.
2024: Fred Arroyo and Amelia Rodriguez
Amelia Rodriguez’s The First Amelia and Fred Arroyo’s Alba and Other Songs were selected by Alexandra Lytton Regalado (final judge) and Emma Trelles (series judge) as the winners of the third Alta California Chapbook Contest. Both titles are now available from Gunpowder Press.
Although Alba and Other Songs is only 14 pages long, this lyrical and well-crafted chapbook has the breadth and substance of a full-length collection. Focusing on the said and unsaid, in an imagistic and incantatory style, Fred Arroyo has written an honest yet tender examination of a father-son relationship. Steeped in the nature of his barrio, Arroyo’s poems trace the borders of land and body to tell a story of family, exile, and belonging: “There are no boundaries / save the lines on maps. // There is no time / save the eye of memory.”
—Alexandra Lytton Regalado
Final Judge
“The flowing, associative poems of The First Amelia sing with confidence and travel through the veins of memory, family, and the landscapes of Colima. Amelia Rodriguez conjures images of sparring hawks, crushed rubies, trees glassed with ice, a snared kite, and other wondrous and unique visions. She converses with the men and women of her past, and at the center is a twinned self, “two Amelias hovering / above the turning earth,” that is hungry and ever-present.”
—Alexandra Lytton Regalado
Final Judge
The judges recognized, as Honorable Mention, Against Surrealism by Luis Torres and nine finalists:
- J.P Dávila, Poemas Sueltas
- Diane de Anda, Reflections
- Chelsea Guevara, Somewhere Over the Border
- SG Huerta, Origen
- Karl Michael Igesias, From the Future
- Max Lemuz, SoCal Sinai
- Mia Leonin, Ofrenda
- Gerardo Pacheco Matus, Desert Cantos Poemas
- Marilyn Melissa Salguero, Blister
2023: Gabriel Ibarra and Florencia Milito
The winners of the second Alta California Prize, selected by Francisco Aragón from an incredibly rich collection of submissions, are Florencia Milito‘s Sor Juana and Gabriel Ibarra‘s On Display. Francisco also recognized Felipe De La Rosa‘s Summer Blooms in Paramount as an honorable mention. In addition to the winners and honorable mention, eight poets were distinguished as finalists including:
“Mira, tu Papa is on TV,” says a mother, coaxing her boy to imagine that Erik Estrada is his father. “Our time together—episodes / rerun is never real, only instances / of his dark, oily hair mirroring mine / as I peddle closer, reach out, / trace the round static of his face.” Wow. It’s a heartwrenching moment that broke me. On Display is moving art, the poet’s craft up to the task.”
—Francisco Aragón
Final Judge
“Sor Juana reveals an exquisite alchemy—the provocative life and death of the baroque master, but also the speaker’s own ‘inherited trauma” as ‘a child of [a] dictatorship,’ which follows her into exile, prompting: ‘This is the heart of the wound.’ The artistry here is replete with skill and grace. ‘History wedges itself / inside four syllables’—the thesis of this breathtaking book-length poem.”
—Francisco Aragón
Final Judge
- Elaine Alarcon, Blood Echoes
- Li Yun Alvarado, Luz Like Love
- Kenneth Chacon, How the Cholo Became a Mystic & Other Dreamer Poems
- Tomas Moniz, Theory of Falling Bodies
- Melinda Palacio, Alamar
- Jorge Quintana, Dying in America
- Linda Ravenswood, A Poem Is a House
- Danny Romero, My Father’s Friends
Of honorable mention, Felipe De La Rosa’s Summer Blooms in Paramont, Francisco writes:
“I listen for the elotero,” the single-line stanza that opens Summer Blooms in Paramount, hints at what will unfold across its twelve pieces, deploying white space as part of its score, shuttling seamlessly across linguistic borders. There’s a lovely melange of southern California landscapes here, where “ephemera kisses / [g]low like dandelions” or where the speaker invites you to “[f]ly inside water swiftly open your pond-eyes” to these gorgeous poems.
2022: Nicholas Reiner and Crystal AC Salas
As the first Alta California Chapbooks, series editor Emma Trelles selected Nicholas Reiner‘s Levitations and Crystal AC Salas‘s Grief Logic, both published in 2022.
“Equal parts lament, memoir, and lyric, this chapbook is written in a wholly original voice that is as accomplished as it is precise. Each poem reveals another sharply crafted layer of memory and observation—whether about family, chess, death, or how remembering is a way of keeping love intact.”
—Emma Trelles
Final Judge
“These poems read and sometimes physically appear like a sprawling Latinx pillowbook, filled with the intimate and honest particulars of family and what it means to navigate language, landscape, and girl/woman/hood. This chap is all heart, image, and sound—and then some.”
—Emma Trelles
Final Judge