Dr. Naomi Helena Quiñonez, Chicana poet, educator, and activist, is the author of three collections of poetry: Hummingbird Dream/Sueño de Colibri, The Smoking Mirror, and The Exiled Moon. A recent recipient of the City of Berkeley Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry (2017); she is editor of several publications, such as Invocation L.A: Urban Multicultural Poetry, which won the American Book Award; Decolonial Voices: Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century and Caminos Magazine. She has been a featured poet for numerous readings throughout the country, Mexico, Cuba and Spain.
Quiñonez serves on the board of Circulo de Poetas & Writers, a Bay Area literary organization; she has offered poetry workshops for the Oakland Women’s Cancer Resource Center, for after-school youth programs in the Mission District and for immigrant families in Hayward. She received a California Arts Council grant to facilitate poetry workshops for the Los Angeles Women in Recovery Project and she currently offers creative writing workshops to women of color in the Bay Area. Quiñonez holds a PhD in American History and Cultural Studies and contributes to the scholarship of Chicana/Latina women.
