Writers of Color

Erika L. Sánchez is a poet, writer, and consultant living in Chicago. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from the University of Illinois at Chicago, holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico, and was a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to Madrid, Spain. She has been a CantoMundo Fellow, Bread Loaf Scholar, and winner of the “Discovery”/Boston Review Prize. In the fall of 2014, the Guild Complex of Chicago invited Erika and four other writers to participate in Kapittel, the International Festival of Literature and Freedom of Speech in Stavanger, Norway. Her poetry has appeared in Pleiades, Drunken Boat, Witness, Hunger Mountain, Crab Orchard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ostrich Review, Copper Nickel, diode, The Southeast Review, Boston Review, “Latino USA” on NPR, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Viking 2015), and is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine. Erika is currently the sex and love advice columnist for Cosmopolitan for Latinas, and has contributed to The Guardian, NBC News, NBC Latino, Elle, Rolling Stone, Al Jazeera, Truthout, Salon, The Grio, BuzzFeed, Cosmopolitan, Common Ground News Service, AlterNet, Jezebel, The Huffington Post, and Ms. Magazine. Her articles have been republished all around the world and have been translated into several languages. She has also written and edited book reviews for Kirkus Reviews and has appeared on American Public Media, The Huffington Post Live, and National Public Radio. Erika has lived in Spain, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico, and is fluent in Spanish. She is currently working on a novel and poetry collection. In addition to her writing career, Erika works as an independent consultant focused on social justice, particularly sexual health and reproductive rights.