Social Justice, Spirituality, and Chicana Writing: An Interview with Demetria Martínez

Born in 1960 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Demetria Martínez is a writer of courage and conviction--a public intellectual, journalist, poet and novelist. Recruited by several Ivy League universities from her public high school in Albuquerque in 1978, she chose Princeton where she earned a B.A. as a Wilson Scholar, after which she returned to Albuquerque to study sacred art for three years at the Sagrada Art School. She covered religion for the Albuquerque Journal, and in 1990 moved to Kansas City to become staff writer and national news editor of theNational Catholic Reporter. In 1993 she moved to Tucson where she continued to write on Latino issues for the National Catholic Reporter and other publications, and was active with the Arizona Border Rights Project. Most recently she has returned to Albuquerque to live. She has published three important collections of poetry, Turning 1989 , Breathing Between the Lines 1997 , and The Devil’s Workshop 2002 ; in addition she has published the innovative and widely read novel Mother Tongue 1994 .