Nancy Mercado



Nancy Mercado (born December 1959) is an American poet, prose writer, editor, and activist whose work focuses on issues of injustice, the environment, and the Puerto Rican and Latino experience in the United States. She forms part of the Nuyorican Movement, a literary genre that branched out from the Beat Movement.

Life
Mercado was born and raised in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She received a B.A. from Rutgers University in 1982), with a double major in art/art history and Puerto Rican Studies, and an M.A. from New York University, in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Script Writing and Cinema Studies, in 1989. She was awarded a Ph.D. in 2004 in English literature, with a concentration in creative writing, from Binghamton University- SUNY. Mercado's dissertation focused on New York City. She has a long association with the Nuyorican Poets Café and many of the other poets who emerged from it have been an essential part of her development as a writer.

Career
Nancy Mercado began her literary career in 1979. As such, some consider her to be part of the second wave of writers that constitute the Nuyorican literary movement. Of her work, Dr. Marilyn Kiss writes, "if the personal is political, then such verses as, "He was forgotten/before he could be remembered/by the heads of state/he provided sugar for," written about her grandfather, Don Portolo, "Director of the Sugar Cane Field Workers", and "Milla can speak of/The turn of the century land reforms,/Of the blinded enthusiasm/For a man called Marín..." about her grandmother, Milla, and "Juanita, Providing food from soil,/Creating homes from ashes,/Teaching tolerance by living..." about her aunt in Puerto Rico, offer testimony to the power of this type of poetic vision."

From 1986 until 1996 Mercado was the Artistic Director of the Young Life Theatre Group; a young adult theatre group based in New Jersey and funded by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. During this time, she authored and directed 7 theatre plays, one of which titled: Alicia in Projectland, was coauthored with Pedro Pietri. All of Mercado's dramatic works were produced in such venues as the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Her play AWAY was commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the National Latina Health Network Organization, as part of an AIDS awareness and prevention campaign for young women of color. This made the script accessible to any theatre company or community group wanting to stage the play. It continues to be produced throughout the United States and Puerto Rico to this day. Around this same period; 1993 until 2004, she was an editor of Long Shot; the original independent literary and art publication. She also served as the publication's editor-in-chief for one of these years.

Mercado's book of poems; It Concerns the Madness (Long Shot Productions), was published in 2000. In 2005 she served on the editorial board for a special issue of Letras Femeninas; a publication of the Asociación Internacional De Literatura Femenina Hispánica, Department of Languages and Literature, Arizona State University. Latino Leaders Magazine's 2007 issue profiled her as "one of the most celebrated members of the Puerto Rican literary movement in the Big Apple."

In 2011 Mercado was guest editor of Phati'tude Literary Magazine's winter issue ''¿What's in a Nombre? Writing Latin@ Identity in America.''

Film, video and radio features include the 1990s Poetry Spots video series directed by Bob Holman, the documentary film, Yari, Yari Pamberi Black Women Writers Dissenting Globalization directed by Jayne Cortez, the 2011 PBS NewsHour documentary special; America Remembers 9/11. and, National Public Radio's, The Talk of the Nation program; Subdued Reflection On Sept. 11 Anniversary in 2012.

Poetry

 * It Concerns the Madness. Hoboken, NJ: Long Shot Productions, 2000.

Edited

 * if the world were mine... the young writer's workshop anthology. Editor. Newark, NJ: New Jersey Performing Arts Center Publication and United Way of Essex and West Hudson, 2003.

Anthologized poems

 * "Going to Work." Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets. Tenth Anniversary Edition. Editors. Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians. New Jersey: Melville House Publishers, 2011.
 * "The Dead," "El Coto Laurel," "In my Perfect Puerto Rico," "Litany for Change," "Milla," "No Nothin," "On My Return from Puerto Rico." Me No Habla with Acento: Contemporary Latino Poetry. Editor. Emanuel Xavier. New York: Rebel Satori Press, 2011.
 * "I Told You." Let Loose on the World: Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75. Editors. Louis Reyes Rivera and Patricia Allen. Newark: The Amiri Baraka Commemoration Committee, 2009.
 * "For Jimi Hendrix." Kiss the Sky: Fiction & Poetry Starring Jimi Hendrix. Editor. Richard Peabody. New York: Paycock Press, 2007.
 * "Milla." Bowery Women Poems. Editors. Bob Holman and Marjorie Tesser. New York: YBK Publishers, Inc., 2006.
 * "Salomon Mercado." In the Arms of Words: Poems for Tsunami Relief. Editor. Amy Ouzoonian. New York: Foothills Publishing and Sherman Asher Press, 2005.
 * "Jetties were the Bridges I Crossed." Latino Literature Today. New York: Longman, 2004.
 * "Milla." From Totems To Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002. Editor. Ishmael Reed. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003.
 * "Going To Work." Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets. Editors. Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians. New Jersey: Melville House Publishers, 2002.
 * "Justice In The Techno Age" and "Lyric For A New Life." Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art. Illinois: Third World Press, 2001.
 * "Somalia." Bum Rush The Page: A Def Jam. New York: Crown Publishing, 2001.
 * "Jetties Were The Bridges I Crossed." Identity Lessons: Contemporary Writing About Learning to be American. Editor. Maria M. Gillan. New York: Viking Penguin, 1999.
 * "Don Portolo." Changer L’Amérique: Anthologie De La Poésie Protestataire Des USA. Editors. Eliot Katz and Christian Haye. France: Maison De La Poésie, 1998.
 * "On My Return from Puerto Rico to the US." In Defense of Mumia. New York: Writers and Readers Press, 1996.
 * "Milla" and "Juanita." ALOUD: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café. Editors. Miguel Algarín and Bob Holman. New York: Henry Holt, 1994.

Anthologized fiction

 * "The Day They Went Shopping." Powwow, American Short Fiction from Then to Now. Editor. Ishmael Reed. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, an imprint of Perseus Books Group, Inc., 2009.

Essays

 * "Miguel Piñero." (Biographical entry.) The Encyclopedia of Hispanic-American Literature. Editor. Luz Elena Ramírez. New York: Facts on File, 2009.
 * "AIDS in My World." Not in My Family: AIDS in the African American Community. Editor. Gil L. Robertson IV. Los Angeles, California: Agate Publishers, 2006.
 * "About Face: My Brief Journey as a Female Puerto Rican Poet." Gare Maritime. Nantes, France: Maison de la Poesie, 2000.
 * "Youth Performance Workshops Reach Students in Elizabeth." Resource. Newark, NJ: New Jersey Performing Arts Center Publication, 1996.

Plays

 * Palm Trees in the Snow (1989)
 * Chillin (1990)
 * Forever Earth (1991)
 * It is I; Stay Alive! (1992)
 * Planet Earth (1993)
 * Alicia in Projectland, coauthored with Pedro Pietri (1994)
 * AWAY (1996)

Other writings

 * Mayhem Poets curriculum