American Quasar

*HONORABLE MENTION for the 2022 International Latino Book Awards, Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award - One Author - English*

American Quasar is a visual-textual collaboration between poet David Campos and artist Maceo Montoya. What began as an exploration of the precipice of violence evolved into an excavation of self, a deep meditation on how country, family, and trauma affect the ability to love. The images and words build a poetic space where the body is understood in both physical and celestial terms, giving a spiritual dimension to the collection's larger claim that the political is personal.

David Campos is the son of Mexican immigrants, a CantoMundo fellow, and the author of Furious Dusk (University of Notre Dame Press, 2015) which won the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. His poems and other work have appeared in Prairie Schooner, the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and Queen Mob's Teahouse among many others. He teaches English at Fresno City College. For more information, visit his website at www.davidcampos.me. 

Maceo Montoya’s paintings, drawings, and prints have been featured in exhibitions and publications throughout the country as well as internationally. He has published three works of fiction, The Scoundrel and the Optimist (2010), The Deportation of Wopper Barraza (2014), and You Must Fight Them: A Novella and Stories (2015), as well as Letters to the Poet from His Brother (2014), a hybrid book combining images, prose poems, and essays. His most recent publication is Chicano Movement for Beginners, a work of graphic nonfiction. Montoya is an associate professor in the Chicana/o Studies Department at UC Davis. More information about his work can be found at www.maceomontoya.com.

Maceo Montoya’s paintings, drawings, and prints have been featured in exhibitions and publications throughout the country as well as internationally. He has published three works of fiction, The Scoundrel and the Optimist (2010), The Deportation of Wopper Barraza (2014), and You Must Fight Them: A Novella and Stories (2015), as well as Letters to the Poet from His Brother (2014), a hybrid book combining images, prose poems, and essays. His most recent publication is Chicano Movement for Beginners, a work of graphic nonfiction. Montoya is an associate professor in the Chicana/o Studies Department at UC Davis. More information about his work can be found at www.maceomontoya.com.