Leticia Urieta
Leticia Urieta is Tejana writer from Austin, TX. She works as a teaching artist in the Austin community. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and holds an MFA in Fiction writing from Texas State University.
Her work appears or is forthcoming in Cleaver, Chicon Street Poets, Lumina, The Offing, Kweli Journal, Medium, Electric Lit and others. Her chapbook The Monster is out now from LibroMobile Press.
She is currently at work completing her novel that tells the story of a Mexican soldadera caught up in the march to Texas during Texas’ war with Mexico.
Las Criaturas is a hybrid collection that blends poetic and speculative narrative forms to tell stories of untold women. The poems and short stories play with traditional storytelling forms and tales to ruminate on the monstrous, unruly, vulnerable, strength and beauty in the feminine and seek to reclaim people’s power in powerless situations. The book is broken into three sections to show the multifaceted nature of the word “criatura.” In the story, “The Monster” a child in a migrant detention center is haunted by a monster made of her own fear. In “La Mujer Alacran,” a woman who is sexually assaulted transforms into a literal “scorpion woman” in order to protect herself. In “The Inbetween Mother,” a daughter attempts to reunite her selkie mother with her true form.