Dr. Melissa Castillo-Garsow is an Associate Professor of English at Lehman College in the Bronx, NY and the CUNY Graduate Center PhD program in English specializing in Latinx Literature and Culture. She is the author of the poetry collection Coatlicue Eats the Apple, editor of the anthology, ¡Manteca!: An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets, co-editor of La Verdad: An International Dialogue on Hip Hop Latinidades and co-author of the novel, Pure Bronx. Her most recent scholarly book project, with Rutgers University Press’ new Global Race and Media series (March 2020), A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture, examines the creative worlds and cultural productions of Mexican migrants in New York City. Her second book of poetry, Chingona Rules, was released with Finishing Line Press in September 2021 and was a Gold Medal Winner of the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award, International Latino Book Awards (2022). Her co-edited volume, Scholars in COVID Times was released with Cornell University Press in September 2023. At Lehman College, Melissa serves as Director of the English Honors Program, a Senator of the CUNY Faculty Senate. She is also Co-Director of the Bronx Latino History Project, a joint project with the Bronx County Historical Society.
Melissa’s short stories, articles, poetry and essays have been published in numerous collections such as Centering Borders: Explorations in South Asia and Latin America, Afro-Latinos in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas, The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Popular Culture and diverse scholarly and media publications including Border – Lines, Lengua y Literature, Acentos Review, Hispanic Culture Review, El Diario/La Prensa, CNN, The Bilingual Review, Women's Studies, and Words. Beats. Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture, a publication for which she has also served as guest editor ("The Brazil Issue," 2016). Melissa has given lectures and poetry readings all over the world including Jadavpur University (Kolkata, India), Seoul National University, Harvard University, Syracuse University, SUNY Potsdam, Swarthmore University, University of Notre Dame, University of Chicago, University of Long Island - BK, and Fordham University.
Prior to joining the faculty at Lehman College, Melissa completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University's Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History where she taught courses in Latinx Cultural Studies and organized the first ever Latinx Poetry Reading and Workshop Series. She earned her PhD in American Studies and African American Studies from Yale University in 2017, a Master’s in English and creative writing from Fordham University, and a Bachelor of Arts from New York University summa cum laude with a double major in Journalism and Latin American Studies.
