We had the good fortune of connecting with Kelly Martínez-Grandal and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kelly, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I came from an artistic family. Both of my parents, Gilda Perez and Ramon Grandal, are renowned Cuban photographers. Of course, that is not an infallible formula, but the world was taught to me from a creative, artistic perspective. Besides that, it was a need for a certain kind of language and expression. The truth is that I am not sure if it is really possible to rationalize the motifs behind those kind of decisions. Family or school or whatever that drove us along the way are, in the end, just fuel to a inexplicable force inside us; a force that often works behind our backs. For example, even when I graduate as an art historian and worked as photography curator for some years, at the end I became a writer. The Literature classes that I attended in university were undoubtedly a window, but also the confirmation of a passion and a path more powerful than my own will.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
As a writer, I am a late bloomer. That is a double edge sword. In one hand, it is a challenge because you have to run double to achieve certain goals, but it gives you also a more conscious sense of what are you doing and what do you want. I have flirted with writing for many years, but my second exile (I was born in Cuba and migrated to Venezuela when a I was a child and then fled again, in 2014, escaping the Venezuelan crisis) was a milestone. Suddenly, I was not anymore a university professor or a photography curator and writing was the only thing that was really mine. It did not depend of a circumstance or a place, but me. So I guess it is never to late to become the true version of yourself and life has its own strange ways to push you out of your own limits. So listen to yourself, listen to that voice inside you that shows you the way and follow it leads.

It has not been an easy path. Not just because of my age, but because I mostly write poetry and poetry is not a popular genre. Poets always feel a little bit pariah and sometimes maybe we pride ourselves of that peripheric condition. Besides that, I also have the challenge of language: I am writing in Spanish in a majorly English speaking country. But I love Spanish and I plan to continue writing in my native language.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I will show them a Miami that does not appears often in TV. Not Miami beach or Calle 8, but those little corners in which emigrants like me have been struggling, for decades, to built a new life: the Salvadorian food truck in Little Havana where I use to eat pupusas; the Hialeah streets where Cuban community, including my family, has been living for decades while missing an island that not longer exists. Probably, I will take them to some Latin-American family restaurants, because Miami is full of rich culinary experiences and these are just an indicator of the richness and vastness of its multiculturality.

I will show them too some historic places: Overtown, for example. Once a thriving Black community, is now living in extreme poverty because of the displacements and gentrification (and its implicit racism), but even then, they are fighting to regenerate the area and its business. And only after that, after the non postcard Miami, I will show them the Art Deco District, which is incredibly beautiful and the incredible Latin-American art collection of the Perez Museum. I will show them too the beauty of nature, specially Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, one of my favorite place in this city.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
To my parents and to my teachers, especially Gabriela Kizer and Anaira Vázquez

Website: https://www.newlatinoboom.com/autores/kelly-martinez-grandal

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-mart%C3%ADnez-grandal-882b81b4

Image Credits
Author’s photograph: Mauricio Gómez Amoretti Garden image: Dainerys Machado Vento Other images: Cesar Salazar

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