A Conversation with Maria Melendez Kelson
Listen in to an oral history conversation with poet Maria Melendez Kelson, interviewed by poet Steven Cordova, as part of the Letras Latinas Oral History Project. Though Melendez Kelson’s most recent work is the contemporary mystery novel Not the Killing Kind, this conversation uncovers her artistic life as a poet in the period before she embarked on her career as a novelist. Melendez Kelson discusses how her mother’s imaginative summer incentive to pay her for childhood poems with ice cream gave her an early knowledge that writing could be a calling or vocation, how the solitude of wildlife biology fieldwork led her to befriend her writing, and her mission to share the important contributions of Latino and Latina poets to the body of works that advocate for honoring nature and our environment.
Experience the Episode
Presented by Institute for Latino Studies
Wednesday, February 5, 2025 12:00 pm
Listen in to an oral history conversation with poet Maria Melendez Kelson, interviewed by poet Steven Cordova, as part of the Letras Latinas Oral History Project. Though Melendez Kelson’s most recent work is the contemporary mystery novel Not the Killing Kind, this conversation uncovers her artistic life as a poet in the period before she embarked on her career as a novelist. Melendez Kelson discusses how her mother’s imaginative summer incentive to pay her for childhood poems with ice cream gave her an early knowledge that writing could be a calling or vocation, how the solitude of wildlife biology fieldwork led her to befriend her writing, and her mission to share the important contributions of Latino and Latina poets to the body of works that advocate for honoring nature and our environment.
This conversation was recorded in April 2007. For more information, please visit the Letras Latinas website.
Meet the Poet: Maria Melendez Kelson
Maria Kelson has two collections of poetry (as Maria Melendez) with University of Arizona Press, which were finalists for the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Colorado Book Award. 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 Poet: Steven Cordova
Born and raised in San Antonio, poet Steven Cordova was educated at the University of Texas at Austin. After moving to New York City in the 1980s, he joined the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, participating in poetry workshops and forming an ongoing writing community with the writers he met there. Cordova is the author of the poetry collection Long Distance (2009), and his poetry and prose are featured in several anthologies, including Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing (2011), The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (2007), and Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English (2000).
With tender frankness and wry humor, his poems chronicle the personal and political turning points in the life of an HIV-positive gay man living in New York City. In an interview for the Almost Dorothy blog, Cordova stated, “Writing the truth is not the same as telling the truth. The former allows for creativity; the latter demands face-to-face exactingness. Once you realize that, writing about the personal gets easier.” As poet Rigoberto Gonzales noted in a review of Long Distance for the Lambda Literary Review, “In the end, Cordova’s affirmation of living as a gay man with HIV is … the precarious balance of vulnerability and strength, darkness and light.”
Culturally Speaking: An Evening with Maria Kelson
Join the St. Joseph County Public Library for an evening with Maria Kelson, poet and author of Not the Killing Kind, a contemporary thriller about a Latina education reformer whose son is wrongfully jailed for murder.
The event will take place on Wednesday, March 5, 2025 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET at the Main Branch of the library, located at 305 South Michigan Street, South Bend, IN 46601 in the Leighton Auditorium in the Main Library’s Community Learning Center. Book signing to follow. Book sales provided by Brain Lair Books. For more information about this in-person event, please visit the St. Joseph County Public Library website.
To check out Not the Killing Kind at SJCPL, click here. To check out Latino Poetry: the Library of America Anthology, click here.
This program is presented in partnership with Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and is presented as part of Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home, a major public humanities initiative taking place across the nation in 2024 and 2025. Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home is directed by Library of America and funded with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Emerson Collective.
About Culturally Speaking
Culturally Speaking is more than an author talk series—it’s a celebration of the storytellers behind the words. This unique program dives into the life experiences, cultural influences, and personal journeys that shape some of today’s most impactful voices. Whether you’re an avid reader, a lover of storytelling, or simply curious about the “why” behind the stories, this series is for you. Learn more at sjcpl.org/programs/culturally-speaking