Minerva Margarita Villarreal

Minerva Margarita Villarreal (1957-2019) wrote in Spanish and was the author of several books of poetry, most notably El corazón más secreto (winner of the international Jaime Sabines poetry prize, 1994), Adamar, Tálamo (published in 2013 by Hiperión and winner of the 2010 international poetry prize to commemorate the bicentenary of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz), Las maneras del agua (winner of the Aguascalientes Fine Arts Poetry Prize, 2016 and the Lira de Oro Hispanic-American Poetry Prize, 2017), as well as Vike: Un animal dentro de mí, which has been described by critics as a new genre, the documentary poem. She was a fellow of Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte. She held an M.A. from the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, where she was Director of the Capilla Alfonsina Biblioteca Universitaria as well as an international poetry collection, El Oro de los Tigres, in honor of Alfonso Reyes’ work as a translator. She was an Associate Member of the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana, a Member of the Consejo Honorario de la Coordinación de la Memoria Histórica y Cultural de la Presidencia de la República, and a Corresponding Member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua.