Mele Martinez

Melani “Mele” Martinez is a Lecturer in the Writing Program, where she teaches first-year writing and food writing courses. She earned a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College. She is the recipient of Fourth Genre’s First Place Editor’s Prize, the Chris White Award, the Tucson Festival of Books 2nd Place Literary Prize, and The Arts Foundation for Southern Arizona New Works Grant. Her work has appeared in Fourth Genre, Bacopa Literary Review, Borderlore, Bearings Journal, and Telling Tongues: A Latin Anthology on Language Experiences. She is at work on a memoir in prose and poetry entitled The Molino, a personal narrative of her family’s tamale and tortilla factory in historic downtown Tucson.