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Academy of American Poets Awards 2026 Ambroggio Prize to Amanda Hernández
Hernández’s poetry collection, La única cosa importante / The Only Thing that Matters, translated by Ana Portnoy Brimmer, will be published by University of Arizona Press
New York, NY (March 19, 2026)—The Academy of American Poets has awarded the 2026 Ambroggio Prize to La única cosa importante / The Only Thing that Matters, a poetry collection by Amanda Hernández and translated by Ana Portnoy Brimmer.
Selected by poet and translator Aaron Coleman, the prize recognizes a book-length poetry manuscript originally written in Spanish and translated into English. The manuscript will be published in 2027 by University of Arizona Press.
Hernández’s manuscript follows the movement of people, language, and memory across the Caribbean and into the United States, exploring questions of community, kinship, and colonial history. Through intimate lyric poems shaped by science, landscape, and personal history, La única cosa importante / The Only Thing that Matters reflects the complexity of contemporary Puerto Rican experience while expanding the possibilities of bilingual poetry in the United States.
Prize judge Aaron Coleman praised the collection’s “wild imagination fueling the courageous vulnerability and self-reflective voice of ‘The Only Thing that Matters,’” adding that it “dwells in the complexities of connection, the (unending) aftermaths of (neo)colonialism and how it has tried to scatter so many of us.” He also wrote, “This translation is ambitious, vivid, swirling with competing energies.”
A selection of poems from La única cosa importante / The Only Thing that Matters can be found on the Academy’s website, Poets.org.
The 2025 Ambroggio Prize was awarded to Manuel Iris and translator Kevin C. McHugh for Toda la tierra es un jardín de monstruos / The Whole Earth Is a Garden of Monsters, which was published by University of Arizona Press in February 2026.
About Amanda Hernández
Amanda Hernández is a Puerto Rican poet and editor based in Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico. Her poetry collections include La distancia es un lugar (2020), Estrategias atómicas (2018), and Entre tanto amarillo (2016), all published by La Impresora. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Bioversa: antología de poesía científica puertorriqueña (Gnomo Editorial, 2024).
Hernandez’s poetry has been commissioned for musical works by the Puerto Rican composer Angélica Negrón, including pieces performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and presented as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series. In 2021, she was named an inaugural Letras Boricuas Fellow supported by the Flamboyán Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.
Hernández is codirector of La Impresora, an independent poetry press and risograph printing studio dedicated to contemporary Puerto Rican, Caribbean, and Latin American poetry.
About Ana Portnoy Brimmer
Ana Portnoy Brimmer is a poet, translator, and organizer from Puerto Rico. Her poetry debut, To Love an Island (2021), won YesYes Books’ 2019 Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest. Her Spanish-language collection Que tiemble was published by La Impresora in 2023 and later translated into French as Aimer une île (Editorial Pulpo, 2025).
Portnoy Brimmer is a 2025 Letras Boricuas Fellow and a 2024 Hedgebrook Writer-in-Residence. She received a 2023 MASS MoCA fellowship for artists from Puerto Rico and was named one of Poets & Writers’ 2021 Debut Poets. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (2024).
About the Ambroggio Prize
The Ambroggio Prize is a $1,000 publication award given for a book-length poetry manuscript originally written in Spanish and translated into English. The winning manuscript is published by University of Arizona Press, which is nationally recognized for publishing emerging and established voices in Latinx and Indigenous literature.
Established in 2017, the Ambroggio Prize is the only annual award of its kind in the United States that honors poets whose first language is Spanish.
About the Academy of American Poets
Founded in 1934, the Academy of American Poets is a leading publisher of contemporary poetry in the United States. The organization annually awards more than $1.3 million to poets at various stages of their careers through its prize program. It also produces Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly funded website for poets and poetry; organizes National Poetry Month each April; publishes the Poem-a-Day series and American Poets magazine; provides free resources to educators; hosts public poetry programs and special events; and coordinates a national Poetry Coalition that promotes the value poets bring to our culture.
To learn more about the Academy of American Poets, including its staff, its Board of Directors, and its Board of Chancellors, visit https://poets.org/.
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Link to Amanda Hernández headshot: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_3h3x3CzBDROZ5TktiQQU61djfbABaaF/view?usp=sharing
Link to Ana Portnoy Brimmer's headshot: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CqlLA5yc_CXE3VPZ3xP7_pmk2gA5zzEH/view?usp=sharing