Noelia Cerna is a Latina poet based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She was born in Costa Rica and immigrated to the United States at the age of 7 and received a bachelor’s degree in English from Westminster College in Missouri. She is currently working on a book of poems discussing the experience of being a first-generation immigrant, a book of essays about the Arkansas prison system and most recently started working on a poetry chapbook about her online dating experiences as a 30-some-year-old divorcée.
She will be the featured reader of the first meeting of 2020 of the Ozark Poets and Writers College. The program is 7-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, at Nightbird Books. We begin and end with an open-mike for poetry and prose, with a 4-minute limit. We love new writers!
Noelia is a reader and poetry feedback editor for Tinderbox Poetry Journal, a writing mentor for Pen America’s Prison Writing Mentorship program and an associate editor with Sibling Rivalry Press.
She has been featured in Little Rock, Hot Springs and Northwest Arkansas, and has performed poetry at the University of Arkansas and Northwest Arkansas Community College. She has featured for the Open Mouth Reading Series and was recently featured in the Westminster College Alumni newsletter, the Hot Springs Sentinel Record and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette regarding her writing. Her poems have appeared in Terse Journal, The North Meridian Review and The Revolution Relaunch. She has featured for the gallery conversation series at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and was the keynote speaker for the Northwest Arkansas Center For Sexual Assault’s MeToo Voices event.
She will be writing Poetry on Demand on her teal Olivetti typewriter for the Looking for America cross political dinner artist reception at the Fayetteville Public Library on Feb. 20 from 5-7 p.m. Come out to chat with her and let her write you “a poem on the spot!”
The collective has been honored with donation of a new book of poetry every month from the University of Arkansas Press — and the raffle is free!
After the guest reader, a hat is passed to provide the guest a small stipend and to help fund future readings.
Ozark Poets & Writers Collective 