Gloria Amescua

Congratulations Gloria! Child of the Flower-Song People: Luz Jimenez, Daughter of Nahua is a 2022 Pura Belpré Author Honor Book!

Gloria Amescua has been a writer since she was a child, writing poems and stories throughout her life. When she was a girl, she would climb into the cradle of an oak tree and enter the world of words. She loves books that reach a person’s heart, head or funny bone and strives to do just that in her writing.

A native Austinite, Gloria received both her B. A. and M. Ed. degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked in education in a variety of roles. A workshop presenter for youth and adults, she is an alumna of Hedgebrook’s Writers-in-Residence program. Gloria was also accepted as a CantoMundo fellow, a national Latino/a organization for poets, and was awarded the Lee & Low’s New Voices Honor Award in 2016. Gloria’s poetry has been published in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including Rattle, Weaving the Terrain, Ocotillo Review, Bearing the Mask, Entre Guadalupe y Malinche, The Crafty Poet II, and Echoes of the Cordillera. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt recently acquired one of her poems for their upcoming national textbook series.

Gloria’s debut book, Child of the Flower-Song People: Luz Jimenez, Daughter of Nahua (illus by Duncan Tonatiuh, Abrams), has been named a 2022 Pura Belpré Author Honor Book. The book is a biography of the indigenous Naha woman who grew up in Mexico during the early 1900s and became a model for 20th-century artists, worked with scholars to preserve Nahuatl language and stories, and was known as the “soul of Mexico”. She is a member of SCBWI and was a finalist in the Austin Chapter Cynthia Leitich Smith Mentorship Award AND We Need Diverse Books’ (WNDB) Mentorship program.  A nature lover, Gloria believes in children, pets and possibilities. Read Gloria’s interview with Cynthia Leitich Smith, Cynsations New Voices Interview, featuring Lee & Low New Voices Award winners. Read Gloria’s The Writing Barn Success Story Spotlight interview. Follow Gloria on Twitter @GloriaAmescua