ANA MARÍA CABALLERO (b. 1981) is a multidisciplinary, award-winning Colombian-American poet and artist. Her work explores how biology delimits our societal and cultural rites, ripping the veil off romanticized motherhood and questioning notions that package sacrifice as a virtue. The speakers in her poems find their voice by navigating the intellectual and the everyday, daring to name what’s left unsaid in that all-important space of home.

 

Her poems are moments of private rebellion, made public.

 

Her first book of poetry, Entre domingo y domingo, received Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize and was second place in the nationwide Ediciones Embajales Prize. Acclaimed international publishing house Valparaíso Press acquired the rights for this book and released it in 2023.

 

She’s published two chapbooks in English. Reverse Commute was anthologized by Silver Birch Press, and Finishing Line Press published Mid-life, a standalone chapbook.

 

Her first nonfiction manuscript, A Petit Mal, was awarded the International Beverly Prize and was published in 2023. It was also a finalist for the Kurt Brown Prize, the Tarpaulin Sky Press Book Awards, the Essay Press Prize, the Electronic Book Awards, the Split/Lip Press reading cycle and longlisted for the 2022 Memoir Prize. In 2024, out of an entry pool of over 2300 applicants, it was named a finalist for the INDIES Forward Review Book of the Year Award.

 

Mammal, her most recent manuscript, was awarded the 2022 Steel Toe Books Award in Poetry and will be published in 2024. It was also a semifinalist for the prestigious Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, designated as a Manuscript of Exceptional Merit by Tupelo Press and a finalist for both The Atticus Review and Driftwood Press reading cycles.

 

Tryst, a collection of three short stories published in 2022 with Web3 publishing house AlexandriaLabs as a limited edition of 100 NFTs, sold out in under forty-eight hours.

 

Her Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net-nominated work has appeared in journals such as the L.A. Review of Books, Portland Review, Salamander, Tupelo Quarterly, Gigantic Sequins and The Southeast Review and reached the final round of consideration in Ploughshare’s Emerging Writers Contest.

 

She graduated with a magna cum laude degree from Harvard University, where she was awarded a scholarship by Madrid’s Complutense University to complete her honors thesis work. As a graduate student of Poetry at Florida International University, she was both the winner and runner-up of the Academy of American Poets Prize.

 

Widely recognized as a Web3 poetry pioneer, her digital poems have been recognized with a Sevens Foundation grant, featured by Feral File, the Knight Foundation, Bright Moments, the Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia, Sotheby’s and exhibited in Times Square, London, Paris, Brussels, Dubai among other venues.

 

Her work with poetry on the blockchain has been covered by major media outlets, such as The Art Newspaper, Artnet, NPR, Entrepreneur, Coindesk and Elle UK. Caballero has been a speaker at events organized by Fundación Telefónica, UNTITLED Art Fairs, UNIT London, the University of the Arts London, Sovereign Nature Institute, NFT NYC, the International Women of Blockchain Conference, O, Miami Poetry Festival, Stacks Foundation’s Web3Week, among others.

 

She cofounded digital poetry gallery theVERSEverse.com, where the intrinsic value of poems as works of art is made manifest via blockchain technology. theVERSEverse has been shortlisted for the Lumen Prize and the Digital Innovation in Art Award.

 

Caballero is a contributing writer for Forbes, covering Web3 culture.