Poetry with María Fernanda
“We wrote, we laughed, we dreamed out loud and left feeling lighter, brighter, and bolder thanks to María Fernanda. María Fernanda teaches like she's planting gardens and lighting fires, all while reminding us that the world depends on our critical thinking and our contributions as stewards. She's a baddie!”
— Creative Grounds DC Founder on María Fernanda’s AfroSurrealism experience
María Fernanda crafted and led her "“A Black Girl’s Poetry Workshop” serving Black Girls in Art Spaces at The National Museum of Women in the Arts
As a literary artist, María Fernanda facilitates writing experiences with conversation and literary techniques to support her participants’ writing practices through the following components:
Creativity
Each session is crafted to encourage your intuitive choices. Historical contextualization will ground the direction of the lesson in an effort to inspire imagination.
Generation
Creating new work is a core component. The structure ignites unique ways to begin writing both in and out of the session.
Revision
Finding the best editing process for your current project is crucial. Several of María Fernanda’s serial collective literary experiences include one-on-one sessions with her to focus on your work.
Book María Fernanda
Popular Themes of María Fernanda’s literary experiences
Break a Vase
How does fragmentation strengthen and connect us to the most crucial details of our lives? This session disrupts our familiarity with writing toward the story structure of beginning, middle, and end.
Assemblage
Participants have an opportunity to delve into a poetic form blending two or more poems. Explore the written word as sculpture.
Broadside
Create a broadside of your poetry. A broadside is an art print with text and drawings. Select a literary work by another write to give homage to or your own!
and more
Hear from workshop participants!
Mess + Process at The Kelly Writers’ House at The University of Pennsylvania.
María Fernanda Chamorro (she/hers) is an award-winning poet and a creative producer with prize-winning collaborations. Awarded the Norma Elia Cantú Award in Creative Writing, her poetry explores the intimacy of sisterhood, the anchor of intergenerational coexistence, and grief.
María Fernanda is a recipient of literary appointments from The National Endowment for the Arts (2021), The Academy of American Poets, The Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
She served as an a Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Judge for New York City Writing, The Black Artists and Designers Association Secondary Advisor at Arizona State University, and a guest speaker for Lincoln Center Education as an Artist in the Industry.
María Fernanda performs her poetry across the United States, including The National Museum of African American History and Culture, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Brooklyn= Museum, Arizona’s Phoenix Art Museum, MoMa PS1, Texas' Denton Black Film Festival, and more. MacArthur Genius Award grantee Terrance Hayes selected her work as a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Amistad Award for College Writers in Poetry.
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 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
As part of 2024 Best of D.C.(released in 2025), 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.
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Featured — BGIAS: Black Girls Writers Room (DMV) @ NMWA
a black girls’ poetry workshop
national museum of women in the arts
Explore generations of language in this free poetry workshop with award-winning poet María Fernanda, from DC, who invites participants to learn how to write a contrapuntal poem, a form blending two or more poems and read in multiple ways. Generative writing exercises will be inspired by excerpts of poems, in-library literary archives, and other sources. Participants will consider the many histories of a word, a name, a home, and so much more. This is for first-time writers and poetry enthusiasts alike. Note: Participants will create in-workshop poems and use them to blend; no need to bring poems already written.
Details at Black Girls in Art Spaces.