Elder statesman, Xicanindio leader, poet of the people, giver of hope to the
oppressed and the incarcerated, Raúl Salinas passed away last night in Austin, Tejaztlán.

As the second winner of The Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize hits the bookstore shelves (future shout out, y’all) I am reminded of one of Montoya’s early champions, poet Lee Herrick, founder and editor of In the Grove, where Montoya’s first published poems appeared. Sadly, Montoya’s only book the ice worker sings was published posthumously in 1999, a year after his premature death at the age of 31. Since then, a collective effort by writers of all stripes has kept his memory and art alive. Hence the memorial poetry prize spearheaded by Letras Latinas of the Institute for Latino Studies at Notre Dame, hence the following poem in Herrick’s debut collection of poetry:

The author of my favorite children's book has died. The New York Times on Madeleine L'Engle:

The book used concepts that Ms. L’Engle said she had plucked from Einstein’s theory of relativity and Planck’s quantum theory, almost flaunting her frequent assertion that children’s literature is literature too difficult for adults to understand.

“It was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant.”