Author Spotlight: Leticia Urieta
- letraslatinasblog2
- 24 hours ago
- 3 min read
Offerings to a Tumbled Temple by Leticia Urieta | Purple Ink Press | November 11 2025 | Pages: 50 | ISBN:
979-8-9892793-5-7
What non-living poet/writer had the biggest influence on your book?
Poet Andrea Gibson, who passed away this year, had a big influence on my work writing vulnerably about my body, my relationship to illness and loving an unruly, sick body. Their work is beautiful because it acknowledges, unflinchingly, the closeness that many chronically ill people have with our own mortality, even navigating suicidal ideation, that lives alongside a fierce love for all the love, relationships and moments that make our lives rich, complex experiences. Their words and love live on, but they are sorely missed.
What are some key themes present in your book?
Some themes that shape this book are intergenerational pain and inheritance, the struggle to make peace with my chronically ill body, navigating grief and loss, and finding love and care with other disabled kin.
How did your relationship with your family influence your writing?
There are several poems in the book that reference and were influenced by the women in my family and the cycles of intergenerational trauma, as well as intergenerational care, that have shaped me so much as a person. In these poems, I tried to render these complexities and pay homage to some of these women, including my grandmothers and cousin who are no longer living but live in my poet heart eternally.
You can often tell a lot about a book by how it begins and how it ends. What is the first line and last line of your book?
The first line of the book is “You, with you back bent, became the mountain pass.” The last line of the book is, “life happens here, the whispers that grow louder each time we press our smiles against each other’s heart windows. They’re reserved, conserved, for those who can feel them behind the mask.”
Do you have any advice for new and emerging writers? Is there anything you wish you knew?
Advice I have given to emerging writers and poets that I think it took me a while to come to terms with is that not all your work will amaze you, and not all work has to be shared, but if you choose to share it, you should feel proud to put your name on it, so you better be writing the most truthful, authentic work, whatever that looks like to you. Don’t create only with genre constraints or submissions in mind, but rather to write what moves you, scares you, challenges you, comforts you, makes you feel more human, more real. That’s the best gift you can give yourself as a creator whose time and energy is precious and valuable.
William Carlos Williams is synonymous with plums. If you had to choose one fruit and one animal/plant/celestial body that would forever remind people of you, what would you choose and why?
I’ve written about this before, but it would be owls. They are one of my favorite birds, I find owl lore fascinating, I’ve written poems and stories about owls, and they are part symbolic lineage from my maternal grandfather. Owls are pretty cool!
Do you have a new project that you’re working on? Could you tell us a bit about it?
I have several projects I am currently working on across genres, including a historical novel with supernatural elements, a fantasy graphic novel, an ecohorror/speculative short story collection which is really new territory for me, and a mixed media poetry project in collaboration with my husband using photography from our current cross-country RV travels.
Leticia Urieta (she/her/hers) is a Tejana writer from Austin, TX. She works as a teaching artist and freelance writer and editor. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and holds an MFA in Fiction writing from Texas State University. Her chapbook, The Monster, published in 2018 from LibroMobile Press. Her hybrid collection, Las Criaturas, was published in 2021 by Flowersong Press and was a finalist for the Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction 2022 from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her poetry chapbook, Offerings to a Tumbled Temple was published in 2025 from Purple Ink Press and her dark fiction collection, The Remedy is the Disease, is forthcoming in spring 2026 from Undertaker Books. You can learn more about
Leticia's work at https://leticiaaurieta.com/.