Discipline: Literature – fiction

Lydia Martín

Discipline: Literature – fiction
Region: Miami, FL
MacDowell Fellowships: 2019

Lydia Martín is an award-winning journalist and fiction writer who spent 25 years covering Miami’s growth and cultural evolution for The Miami Herald. Her writing has appeared in literary journals such as Ploughshares, Fifth Wednesday Journal, and Origins Literary Journal; in books such as Presenting Celia Cruz, (Clarkson Potter, 2004) and Louis Vuitton City Guide Miami (LV, 2014); and in magazines such as Billboard, Esquire, InStyle, Oprah, Latina (for which she also served as a contributing editor), Hispanic, and Out. Martín, born in Havana and raised in Yonkers, Chicago, Flint, and Miami, was part of the Miami Herald team that won a 1993 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of 1992's Hurricane Andrew. She was twice a finalist for the Livingston Award, the largest all-media, general reporting prize in American journalism; and won a GLAAD Media Award for Spanish-language magazine writing. She won the 2016 Ploughshares Emerging Writer contest; and the 2016 Editor’s Prize from Fifth Wednesday Journal, which nominated her for a Pushcart Prize. Martín has a B.A. in English and journalism from the University of Miami (1987) and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Bennington College (2016).

In residence she worked on a draft of a novel based on her short story, "The Adjustment Act" (Ploughshares, 2016). Martín's story "Paper Boats" appeared in Masters Review Anthology, Volume VIII, in fall 2019.

Studios

Banks

Lydia Martín worked in the Banks studio.

Banks, an ell on the north end of the Lodge dormitory, was first used as an artist’s studio in 1970. Since then, it has played host to an extraordinary list of writers working in several disciplines. In all seasons, Fellows have enjoyed the pastoral view through the French doors facing a field…

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