Las Piedrecitas

The poems in Noelia Cerna’s beautiful, debut poetry collection, Las Piedrecitas, sing. They sing in English and Spanish; they sing of her childhood and Nicaraguan heritage; they sing of brown bodies and immigrant hands thickened by work and struggle; they sing of hope and redemption and survival. Cerna’s poetry does not warble, it projects in an unflinching voice that tackles themes such as prescribed gender roles, addiction, domestic violence, familial estrangement and racism in a country where ＂ whiteness requires you to fold to the point of breaking.＂ These poems proclaim their truth in an indignant chorus that refuses to fold, refuses to break, and refuses to stay silent for one more minute. -- Caridad Moro-Gronlier, author of Tortillera and Visionware

Noelia Cerna is a Latina poet based in Springdale, AR. She was born in Costa Rica and immigrated to the United States at the age of 7 where she received a Bachelor’s degree in English from Westminster College in Missouri. Her poems have been published in audio form in Terse. Journal and in print in the The Revolution [Relaunch], the Girl Gang blog, the Plants and Poetry Journal and The North Meridian Review. Noelia is a book editor for the North Meridian Review and an award winning writing mentor for Pen America’s Prison Writing Mentorship program.