Writing Brilliant Essays: A Conversation with Amelia Montes

Amelia María de la Luz Montes is an Americanist (Chicanx/Latinx) LGBTQ scholar and creative writer who is interested in narrative contexts that complicate and contradict normative constructions of national, social, and personal identities. Hemispheric or transnational studies are also terms that describe such explorations. Her geographic focus encompasses North America, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. During the 2017/2018 calendar year, she was a Fulbright Scholar in the former Yugoslavia where she taught a graduate seminar in Chicanx/Latinx literature, and conducted interviews/research on connections among and between both cultures. She is completing her monograph, La Llorona on the Danube: A Mexi-Yugo Memoir(The Ohio University Press) and a chapter from this memoir, “Defining La Rumorosa and Borderlands,” (Fifth Wednesday Journal) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.