Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, translator, and immigration advocate born in Tepechitlán, Zacatecas, Mexico. He earned his B.A. from Sacramento State University and was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. He is a founding member of the Undocupoets campaign, which successfully eliminated citizenship requirements from all major first poetry book prizes in the country and was recognized with the Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers award. He is the author of Cenzontle, which was awarded the 2017 A. Poulin, Jr. Prize and published by BOA editions in 2018. His memoir, Children of the Land, was published by Harper Collins in January of 2020. He is the translator of Argentine modernist poet Jacobo Fijman and is currently translating the poems of contemporary Mexican Peruvian poet Yaxkin Melchy. He co-translated the work of the Mexican poet Marcelo Uribe with C.D. Wright before her untimely passing. He teaches at the Ashland Low-Res MFA Program and gives poetry workshops for incarcerated youth in Northern California, where he lives with his wife, son, and extended family.