The Author
Demetria Martínez is
an author, activist, lecturer and columnist. Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape
Chicana is now out. It won the 2006 International Latino Book Award in
the category of best biography.
Her books include the widely translated novel, Mother
Tongue (Ballantine), winner of a Western States Book Award for Fiction,
and two books of poetry, Breathing Between the Lines and The
Devil’s Workshop (Univ. of Arizona Press). (Martínez reads a
sampling of poems from Breathing Between the Lines on her new CD,
with music by Devon Hall.) She writes a column for the National Catholic
Reporter, an independent progressive newsweekly.
Mother Tongue is based in part upon Martínez's 1988 trial for conspiracy against the U.S. government in connection with transporting Salvadoran refugees into the country, a charge that with others carried a 25 year prison sentence. A religion reporter at the time covering the faith-based Sanctuary Movement, she was found not guilty on First Amendment grounds.
Born in Albuquerque, NM in 1960, where she now resides, Martínez earned her BA from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Martínez teaches at the annual June writing workshop at the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Mass., Boston.
In New Mexico she is active with Enlace Comunitario, an immigrants’ rights group that serves Spanish-speaking victims of domestic violence.