Mary Ellen Sanger

Mary Ellen Sanger has published in two languages and across genres (poetry, nonfiction, fiction), in online and print venues in both Mexico and the US.

She lived in Mexico for 17 years (working in the tourism industry for most of those years) until the event described in "Blackbirds in the Pomegranate Tree: Stories from Ixcotel State Prison."

She has won awards for her poetry, fiction and nonfiction, but is most proud of the work she has been able to do writing with others:

She led bilingual writing workshops for New York Writers Coalition for 7 years while in NYC, and has served on the PEN Prison Writing Committee for six years. After moving to Colorado, she joined the team from CSU's Community Literacy Center that leads writing workshops with the women of the Larimer County Detention Center.

She is currently trying to write a poem a day to continue the work she has done with author Yvonne Garrett on their "Poem-a-Day" series (as of 2013 in three chapbook volumes), and is working on a novel set in Mexico and the US.

Elena Poniatowska, winner of the 2013 Premio Cervantes (some equate this prize to the Nobel Prize in Literature for the Spanish-speaking world) wrote in the introduction to "Blackbirds in the Pomegranate Tree: Stories from Ixcotel State Prison" --

"Mary Ellen Sanger is a great writer, there can be no doubt. Her prose goes straight to your very heart and stays there."

Mary Ellen hopes that this is true.