New York, NY (March 11, 2025)—The Academy of American Poets announces that Toda la tierra es un jardín de monstruos / The Whole Earth Is a Garden of Monsters, written by Manuel Iris and co-translated by Iris and Kevin McHugh, has been selected by celebrated poet Giannina Braschi as the 2025 winner of the Ambroggio Prize. Established in 2017, the Ambroggio Prize is a $1,000 publication award given for a book-length poetry manuscript originally written in Spanish and with an English translation. The winning manuscript and accompanying translation will be published in 2026 by the University of Arizona Press, a nationally recognized publisher of emerging and established voices in Latinx and Indigenous literature.
Braschi praised the book for its profound meditation on migration and loss:
“Toda la tierra es un jardín de monstruos / The Whole Earth Is a Garden of Monsters is an imaginative, earnest, and timely depiction of the causalities of mass migrations to the United States from Latin America. The poet pays homage to the migrant who will not be remembered or missed if lost. There is an intriguing parallel between two main characters—Juan Domínguez, migrant of fire, and Hieronymus Bosch, portraitist of fire—whose early lives are marked by the catastrophic fire from which they were born into new names, new ways, new lives.”
Braschi also lauded Iris’s and McHugh’s translation for achieving “fluidity and transparency, a dynamic duo of qualities that make for an engaging experience.”
As one of the Academy’s signature prizes—alongside the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award and the Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Awards—the Ambroggio Prize, which was established in 2017, underscores the importance of Spanish-language poetry and translation in shaping contemporary American letters and ensures that powerful stories are read by a wider audience. Previous winners include Octavio Quintanilla and Natalia Treviño, whose 2024 Ambroggio Prize-winning manuscript, Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours (University of Arizona Press), is being launched today, March 11, 2025.
Manuel Iris is a Mexican-born American poet and the author of five poetry collections, including Notebook of Dreams [Cuaderno de los sueños], which won the 2009 Merida National Poetry Award, and The Disguises of Fire [Los disfraces del fuego], winner of the 2014 Rodulfo Figueroa Regional Award for Poetry. He has held several distinguished positions, including poet laureate of Cincinnati from 2018 to 2022. His European debut, Descifrar lo invisible / Rozszyfrować niewidzialne, was published in 2023 with Polish translations by Marta Eloy Cichocka. Iris currently lives and writes in Cincinnati.
Kevin C. McHugh is a poet who received special commendation by Poetry Ireland for his poem “Bent, Spindled and Mutilated.” Additionally, he is the author of professional and historical articles and the editor of books of poetry, history, and literature. He also taught writing and English for more than thirty years. McHugh is a citizen of the United States and Ireland and resides in Cincinnati.
About the Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is the United States’ leading champion of poets and poetry. The organization annually awards more than $1.3 million to poets across the nation. It also operates Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly funded poetry website, and organizes National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world. Additionally, the Academy publishes Poem-a-Day and American Poets magazine, provides free educational resources for K–12 educators and adult learners, and leads the Poetry Coalition, a network of organizations dedicated to promoting the vital role of poetry in our culture. Visit poets.org for more information.