Love as a source and condition of joy and survival is at the heart of my life and my work. Here are a few things you can learn about me through my loves: I write to heal, to hope, to dream, to rise above and dive below, and find the love hidden in the darkest corners where others rarely look. Reading is a first love that has endured. I write in communion with a world I love as sacred and whole, to make contact with any who have wondered where or when their fire burned brightest and how it was doused and why. What can we do to fan the chispa, the tiny ember that still burns, into flames that will warm and light our way? This is a question I learned to ask through the work of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and I ask it every day. I love a good hat, a tight dance move and Orchard Beach in the Bronx. I love the motley crew of many that I am blessed to call my family and friends. My sons, Gabriel and Antonio, and my husband, Fernando crown this list of love with fiery bright light that has lit my path for close to three decades. The more traditional story that can be told about me is in the bio below, but you will know me best by what I love, who I love and what I write. Dr. Melissa Coss Aquino is a Puerto Rican writer from The Bronx and an Associate Professor in the English department at Bronx Community College, CUNY. She serves as the co-faculty advisor for Thesis, the literary journal of BCC. Her work has been published in Callaloo, The Fairy Tale Review, Hippocampus and Centro. Her book, Jesús Colón: 100 Years of A Radical Puerto Rican in New York is under contract and set to be published in 2021. She has an essay in Of Color: Poets' Ways of Making ~ An Anthology of Essays on Transformative Poetics (2019). She received her MFA from The City College of New York, CUNY and her Ph.D. from The Graduate Center, CUNY in English. She is a proud VONA, AROHO and Hedgebrook alumna. Her fiction is represented by Soumeya Roberts at HG Literary. Her first novel, Carmen and Grace, was published by William Morrow Harper Collins 2023. |