Sheila Maldonado is the author of the poetry collections, one-bedroom solo (A Gathering of the Tribes / Fly by Night Press, 2011) and that’s what you get (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2021). She is a CantoMundo Fellow and a Creative Capital awardee as part of desveladas, a visual writing collective. She has served as an artist-in-residence on Governors Island for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and as a Cultural Envoy to Honduras for the US State Department. She teaches writing for the City University of New York and holds degrees in English from Brown University and poetry from the City College of New York. She was born in Brooklyn, raised in Coney Island, the daughter of Armando and Vilma of El Progreso, Yoro, Honduras. She lives in El Alto Manhattan. She has taught and read and written with virtually every grade level of NYC student and is forever a city kid herself.