Darrel Alejandro Holnes
Darrel Alejandro Holnes is an Afro-Panamanian American writer. His plays have received productions or readings at the Kennedy Center for the Arts American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), The Brick Theater, Kitchen Theater Company, Pregones Theater/PRTT, Primary Stages, and elsewhere. He is a member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, Civilians R&D Group, Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Workshop, and other groups. His most recent play, Black Feminist Video Game, was produced by The Civilians for 59E59, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Center Theater Group, and other theaters and venues and won an inaugural Anthem Award. He is the founder of the Greater Good Commission and Festival, a festival of Latinx short plays.
Holnes is the author of Migrant Psalms (Northwestern University Press, 2021) and Stepmotherland (Notre Dame Press, 2022). He is the recipient of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize from Letras Latinas, the Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing (Poetry). His poem "Praise Song for My Mutilated World" won the C. P. Cavafy Poetry Prize from Poetry International. He is an assistant professor of English at Medgar Evers College, a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY), and a faculty member at New York University. For more information visit www.darrelholnes.com
Selected Publications
POETRY: “Black Parade,” Poets.org
POETRY: “Marvelous Sugar Baby,” The American Poetry Review
POETRY: “Rihanna & Child,” National Endowment for the Arts
REVIEW: “A biracial teen with autism, his ‘Black feminist video game’ and the power of play,” Los Angeles Times
PODCAST: “Art Works - Darrel Alejandro Holnes,” National Endowment for the Arts
WORKS:
Stepmotherland
University of Notre Dame Press, 2022
Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize
Migrant Psalms
University of Notre Dame Press, 2021
Winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize
Topics addressed in readings:
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Racial Justice
Gender and Sexuality
Literacy
Poetry, Creative Writing
Playwriting
Blackness
Writing as Spiritual Practice
Sample workshop 1:
Un-discovering America/Discovering Abya Yala: Developing Afro-Indigenous Poetry and Practice
sample workshop 2:
Creating the Creative Altar: Self-Made Altars as Fountains of Creativity
sample workshop 3:
The Ritual of Writing: Developing an Everyday Writing Practice
testimonials
“Darrel Alejandro Holnes captures beautifully the deep investment in hope (and in the divine) that immigrants must make, and the deeper investment in themselves that fuels their hope. And with vibrant images, compelling narratives, and witty and affective turns of phrase, he sings the ambivalence of arrival and the shifting blues of self-making.”
“Darrel Alejandro Holnes sings with holy irreverence. His lyricism transforms the dashed pottery of a Jeremiah into the broken windows that show us a wilder world is still possible. These are love poems to the present—earnest, earthy, unpredictable. His migrant tongue shows us why we need to read in the presence of all the languages of the world. Here is a voice that has arrived, just in time for these times.”
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