Award winner Martín Espada among writers in new fellowship

NEW YORK (AP) — This year’s winner of the National Book Award for poetry, Martín Espada, is among 20 Puerto Rican writers chosen as the inaugural fellows for a program co-founded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Flamboyan Foundation’s Arts Fund. The Letras Boricuas Fellows are a blend of new and established voices who also include fiction writers Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa and Francisco Font Acevedo, creative nonfiction writers Mercy Romero and Vanessa Mártir and children’s writer Mrinali Álvarez Astacio. Each fellow receives a $25,000 grant.