María Fernanda (she/hers) writes exploring the intimacy of sisterhood, the anchor of intergenerational coexistence, and grief.

María Fernanda’s latest work appears in The Hill Rag, The Rumpus, Luna Luna Magazine, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4, and Cheryl Clarke's born in a bed of good lessons: poems inspired by the works of Lucille Clifton. María Fernanda is a published contributor of The Library of Congress and a Two-Time Best of the Net Nominee.

Awarded the Norma Elia Cantú Award in Creative Writing, María Fernanda is a recipient of literary appointments from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Arizona Commission on the Arts, and elsewhere. She served as aninaugural Academy of American Poets Poetry Coalition Fellow.

María Fernanda performs her poetry across the United States, including The National Gallery of Art, The National Museum of African American History and Culture, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, The New York City Poetry Festival, The Brooklyn Museum, Arizona’s Phoenix Art Museum, MoMa PS1, Texas' Denton Black Film Festival, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and more.

She presented a poetry experience in collaboration with the Freedom and Resistance Exhibition inspired by The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience in Washington, DC (details here), as well as presented on her independent research conducted in Spain in 2026.

Her presentation, “Baldwin’s Octave: Baldwin at the Intersection of Tenderness and Music,” was selected to be part of the International Conference on James Baldwin at the Centre Universitaire Méditerranéen in Nice and Saint-Paul de Vence Her work was selected by Anaphora Arts for a fellowship.

María Fernanda served as a Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Judge for New York City Writing, The Black Artists and Designers Association Advisor at Arizona State University, and a guest speaker for Lincoln Center Education as an Artist in the Industry.

María Fernanda often reads poetry in service of locally-rooted national initiatives and conversations, including The Bronx is Reading’s The Bronx Book Festival, #PoetsforPuertoRico, The Rainbow Book Fair, #MeTooMovement Freelancers Hub, DC’s Youth Leadership Foundation, and others.

She is the founder and executive producer of the independent interview series a poetry garden, where Black poets and gardeners discuss their creative and historical connections to gardens.  María Fernanda is the founder of five other series:

• Where We At! at the National Gallery of Art

• The Hour Open Mic at Politics and Prose

• Let’s Write Poetry Saturdays (multiple locations)

• honoring nikki giovanni in the district of columbia (multiple locations)

• Poetry and Presence Lecture series at the American Poetry Museum

In February 2025, she is the first poet to present at Brookings Institution, a global think tank that conducts in-depth, nonpartisan research to improve policy and governance at local, national, and global levels. MacArthur Genius Award grantee Terrance Hayes selected her work as a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Amistad Award for College Writers in Poetry.

Serving as The Academy of American Poets Poetry Coalition Fellow, she organized Of Restless Gardens, a digital event was inspired by Linda Hogan's "Map" and part of the Academy of American Poets’ Poetry and Environmental Justice programming.

She spoke on her entrepreneurship at New York University to a lecture hall of college students visiting from across the New York City metropolitan area as part of the BLOC conference.

As part of 2024 Best of D.C., The Washington City Paper recognized the DCPL Mount Pleasant location as a second runner up in Best Library Branch of 2024 where María Fernanda programmed four poetry programs as part of their offerings, resulting in nearly 60% of their overall poetry programming.