Hecha en México, Norma Liliana Valdez made her way to California in her mother’s pregnant belly. She is an alumna of the VONA/Voices Writing Workshop, the Writing Program at UC Berkeley Extension, and was a 2014 Hedgebrook writer-in-residence. A member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop and a CantoMundo fellow, her poems appear in Calyx, Huizache, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Latinas: Struggles & Protests in 21st Century USA, among others.
I married a man who is related to me. I started dating him when I was seventeen and of course, my mother immediately liked him. He grew up in my parents’ hometown.