Started by a vision to create a central Texan sustainable literary community by promoting literacy in underserved & marginalized communities by directly involving local writers in the publishing process.
With the sponsorship of the Burdine Johnson Foundation, we created this workshop keeping in mind the things we would have wanted to learn during our educational career. Creative writing was not encouraged by instructors or parental figures as a viable or even possible career option.
Our hope is not only to get these students to appreciate and value their own work, but also connect them to other artists of similar backgrounds that have paved the way in pursuing creative writing as a career & succeeded. We want to open doors to young writers to let them know their dreams are possible. The Youth Poet Laureate program rooted in Hays county, will promote literacy through poetry. This is an opportunity for underserved youth, and the general local community to get excited about the literary arts.
The winning manuscript will undergo an editing process by I.R. Editors, and released April 2026. The chapbook’s launch will be celebrated with a reading and book signing at The Price Center & Garden. The highest elected official in the county, Judge Ruben Becerra will recognize the Y.P.L. The Y.P.L. will be required to attend & speak at three City Council or Commissioners Court meetings while they hold this title. They would editorial assist one issue of Infrarrealista Review, meeting with the I.R. editors three times. They will also be invited to I.R.’s monthly poetry readings & encouraged to read at two of them.
Hays Youth Poet Laureate program comprises a workshop series, Auto-Retrato/Self-portrait–created for budding poets and writers ages 13-19, and a chapbook publication contest. The workshops are meant to generate work to put together a manuscript for the competition.
Download our “Application Tips & Tricks” for more information.
For any additional questions, accommodations, or comments, please contact Juania Sueños at:
infrarrealistareview@gmail.com
Adelie Donovan’s Epitaph for My Fireflies is the winner of the 2025 Hays Youth Poet Laureate prize, chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Epitaph for My Fireflies is a collection of memories that document both the light and the dark moments of adolescence. Donovan dives into descriptions of childhood, first loves, abuse, and family trauma.
Adelie Donovan (she/her) is a young poet from San Marcos, TX. Her motto is “Life is too short to be worried about what other people think, so go talk to that girl, compliment that person, live your life.”
An excerpt from the Hays Free Press article
“A lot of the poets say, ‘Oh, this poem took me eight months.’ I’m going to be completely honest, all of these poems took me no more than 10 minutes,” said the Donovan. “I’ve been trying to write poetry for so long, but I think the workshop that I did … it really helped to bring that out.”
Not only was she able to revel in creativity during the process, but the competition gave her a healthy outlet to express her emotions.
“It was supposed to be about yourself, which is all I really write about … [So], it’s a lot about growing up, childhood trauma; it just had a lot of themes of home and what that means to me and just a lot about my childhood and who I am,” Donovan said.
On March 21st, 2025, we celebrated the new Hays Youth Poet Laureate, Adelie Donovan, at the Price Center in San Marcos, TX. The evening included readings by our new HYPL Adelie Donovan, 2024 Texas Poet Laureate Amanda Johnston, Hays Youth Poet Laureate Workshop instructor SG Huerta, Hays Youth Poet Laureate Finalist Gavin Barrows, and a virtual message from our 2025 HYPL judge, Naomi Shihab Nye. After the reading, Adelie Donovan signed copies of her book, published by Plancha Press, Epitaph for My Fireflies.
June Paddison is our inaugural Hays County Youth Poet Laureate. Her poetry chapbook, To Be a Woman (and not a girl), explores the speaker’s journey through heartbreak, emotional intensity, childhood recollections, and growth.
“When I first selected this poet as the inaugural Youth Poet Laureate for Hays County, I said I chose her for her complex poetry reeling with interesting images, honesty, and measured emotional texturing, and for her firm control of the form of her poems. I could not wait to read the next poem. When I read this full collection of her work, I was mesmerized again by the depth of the poems and bravery in them, and this kind of experience with reading a book of poetry can only happen when the poet is skilled in traversing the emotional landscape of their subject, adhering to the rules of their own ars poetica, their own voice, their own control of the music in each line, and this is exactly what has happened in this collection.” –Natalia Treviño, judge of the 2023 HYPL Contest
Excerpt from the San Marcos Daily Record article
The proclamation stated that poetry is a powerful tool in a time when illness, war, climate change and mass shootings occur regularly because it allows people to articulate their pain. “The Hays Youth Poet Laureate program and award, launched by the local nonprofit Infrarrealista Review with vital support from The Burdine Johnson Foundation, was catapulted by a vision to promote literacy in underserved communities within Hays County,” the proclamation stated. “The HYPL program has successfully kindled the spirit of generating magic through language in our youth, with four formally trained poets serving as instructors in a free poetry workshop geared to the creation of a manuscript” The proclamation stated that the HYPL program shows youth that writing can be a viable career path and introduces students to minority role models such as the 2020 Texas Poet Laureate Emmy Perez.
“We are certain this recognition will open doors for them, and possibly reshape their journeys toward a life of well-being, fulfillment and creation,” the proclamation stated. “In September 2023, students ages 13 to 19 submitted poetry manuscript applications to Infrarrealista Review, [which were] accompanied by Statements of Purpose that openly manifested the backgrounds, difficulties and goals of these young persons who still expressed confidence and big dreams against all odds.”
Guide students to learn what their artistic strengths are.
To find the ways art participates in our sense of self and contribute to a portrait of a peoples from the same diaspora. This program seeks to move students to explore and express their stories through different artistic forms using an anti-colonial framework. The workshop seeks to help attendees cultivate an eye and love for art as a life-long tool for expression, & connection as a form of Resistencia. Once students gain emotional tools to improve relationship to self through liberating self- expression.
Reframe/flip self-narrative.
Many of these students have been told who they are by the State. Their identities have been reduced to their mistakes or their “master status.” Mental health is all about our relationship to the self/soul. In the past we examined Yolanda Lopez’ auto-retratos, and portraits of the women in her family.
Gain Publishing, Editing & Curating Skills.
By the end of the course, students will have written, edited, and published a small book—chapbook—and organized a reception of visual works that tell their own stories.
Andrea Muñoz Martinez is an abstract painter of borderland landscapes, from Uvalde. She is an alumnus of the U.C. Davis MFA program.
Cloud Delfina Cardona is a San Antonio based poet, educator, and author of What Remains.
Juania Sueños is a Zacatecan poet, and cofounder of the Infrarrealista Review. Her work has appeared in Sybil Journal, The Skinkbeat Review, Acentos Review, & Porter House Review. She is currently a fellow with the Texas After Violence, After Visions program.
Jeffrey Charles Stanley is a interdisciplinary artist based in New York City and Brownsville, Texas. His work combines video and objects to build stories and environments with feelings about ecology, and humanity.
Amber Isaac is a queer trans writer from the Midwest. Her work appears in Prairie Schooner, Coachella Review, and Cimarron Review. They are the Reviews Editor at Infrarrealista Review.
Burdine Johnson Foundation
The Center for the Study of the Southwest
