From Poet to Novelist

Experience the Episode

Presented by Institute for Latino Studies

Wednesday, April 2, 2025 12:00 pm

Listen in to an oral history conversation with poet Maria Melendez Kelson, interviewed by Notre Dame graduate literary researcher Paulina Hernández-Trejo, recorded 17 years after Melendez Kelson’s original Letras Latinas Oral History Project interview. Melendez Kelson’s most recent work is the contemporary mystery novel Not the Killing Kind, and this conversation uncovers her creative transition from her career as a successful poet to a mystery writer. She discusses how she discovered an unexpected audacity within herself that allowed her to find her political voice, the kinship and responsibility she feels toward vulnerable communities, and the surprising spiritual power that resides in a writer’s name.

For more information on Letras Latinas at the Institute for Latino Studies, please visit the Letras Latinas website.

Meet the Author: Maria Melendez Kelson

Maria Melendez Kelson has two collections of poetry (as Maria Melendez) with University of Arizona Press—How Long She’ll Last in this World and Flexible Bones—which were finalists for the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Colorado Book Award, respectively. Not the Killing Kind is her debut novel. It received the inaugural Eleanor Taylor Bland Award for Crime Fiction Writers of Color from Sisters in Crime.
A former Santa Fe Arts Institute and Hedgebrook resident, she has given readings and workshops at campuses and literary festivals around the U.S. and served as an American Voices arts envoy in Bogotá, Colombia. Born in Arizona, raised in northern California, she has lived in one southeastern, three midwestern, and five western states. Connect at mariakelson.com.

Meet the Researcher: Paulina Hernández-Trejo

Paulina Hernández-Trejo is an English Ph.D. student at the University of Notre Dame. As a transfronteriza from the El Paso/Juárez Borderland region in Texas and Chihuahua, she is intrigued by the legal, emotional, social, and haunting complexities in U.S. immigration and migration history. Her literary research focuses on the haunting presences that illuminate the underlying socio-historical complexities of the Borderlands in 20th and 21st-century Black, Indigenous, and Latinx literatures. Further, she is a digital humanist and uses digital methodologies to conduct literary cartographic analyses and create digital archival representations of marginalized histories.

Former SMC fellow, professor returns to South Bend to promote debut novel

Brought by Notre Dame’s Institute of Latino Studies, Maria Kelson read excerpts from her poetry and novel

On March 5, 2025, Notre Dame’s Institute of Latino Studies (ILS), in partnership with the St. Joseph County Public Library and Library of America, hosted poet and debut novelist Maria Kelson to speak on her 2024 novel, titled “Not the Killing Kind.” 

Kelson’s novel follows single mother and teacher Boots Marez as she tries to prove her adopted son Jaral’s innocence following his arrest for the murder of one of her former undocumented students. Set in northern California, the story places undocumented communities in the limelight, highlighting several of their hardships. 

Kelson served as a fellow of the Center for Women’s Intercultural Leadership at Saint Mary’s College from 2003 to 2005. Afterwards, she worked as an associate professor of English at SMC until 2006. 

“I loved teaching at a women’s college. It was an experience that I haven’t had before or since. I loved emphasizing women’s success and getting to know young women writers through my classes,” Kelson said. 

To read the full article, please click here.

This article was written by Aynslee Dellacca and was first published in The Observer on March 6, 2025.