Nancy Mercado

Poet, editor, and activist Nancy Mercado received her BA from Rutgers University, an MA from New York University, and a PhD in English literature from SUNY Binghamton. She is the author of the poetry collection It Concerns the Madness (Long Shot Productions, 2000) and the editor of the first anthology dedicated to Nuyorican women writers, originally published online in two volumes by Hunter College. She has also written and directed seven plays. 

Mercado has presented her work throughout the United States and abroad for institutions and events that include Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Symphony Space, Lincoln Center, the Public Theatre, the Whitney Museum, the University of Nantes, the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), and the Dodge Poetry Festival. Poet Roberto Fernández Retamar invited her to Cuba to present her work at Casa de las Américas, a literary research center.

Mercado was the recipient of the 2017 American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. She also received the Arturo Alfonso Schomburg Award from the Association for Equality and Excellence in Education, the Carmen Vega Rivera Advocacy Award from Latina 50 Plus, the Newark Public Library Hispanic Research and Information Center Award, and the Rutgers University Center for Latino Arts and Culture Award. In 2019, she was named one of the Frederick Douglass 200 by the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives and the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington, D.C., joining a list of notable educators, entrepreneurs, diplomats, and other writers whose work embodies Douglass’s commitments to freedom and civil rights.

During the height of the COVID pandemic in December 2020, Mercado established and chaired the Miguelabration Committee, an organizing vehicle created to pay tribute to the founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Miguel Algarín. Mercado also worked for eleven years as an editor of the underground literary and art publication Long Shot, serving as the journal’s editor-in-chief for one of those years. Mercado currently serves as a board member for the Before Columbus Foundation, an assistant editor for EcoPoetry.org, and a guest curator for the Museum of American Poetics.