Biography

Alexa Hurtado-Montaño was born in Cali, Colombia. She is a poet, a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA), and a PhD student in Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University (College Station, Texas). She holds a BA in Literature from Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia), where she was a Martin Luther King MLK-Fellowship Program Scholar. She also earned a Diploma in Leadership for Political Advocacy at the Catholic University, through which she strengthened her cultural initiatives and community engagement processes.

As a Graduate Teaching Assistant, Alexa instructs undergraduate Spanish courses while pursuing her doctoral research. Her academic focus is on Afro-Colombian, Afro-Latin American, and Afro-Caribbean poetry, particularly by women, analyzed through Afro-diasporic theories and concepts such as African ecocriticism, Muntu philosophy, ecowomanism, Afro-neobaroque aesthetics, and African philosophy. Her work examines the intersections of race, gender, and power, centering on the decolonization of gender within the African diaspora. She uses poetry as an act of poetic justice to reclaim the Black woman’s body as a space of resistance, empowerment, and transformation.

Alexa is the organizer and coordinator of the annual event Black Women Poetry at Texas A&M University and has participated in various conferences and poetry recitals. In her anthology Confesiones de Melencó (2024), her creations reframe her daily life as an Afro-Colombian woman, vindicating the body as territory while challenging systems of power and domination