Esperanza Cintrón

Esperanza Cintrón is the author of Shades, Detroit Love Stories, a collection of intertwined short stories published by Wayne State University Press. Shades is a 2020 Michigan Notable Book and was a finalist in the 2020 Midwest Book Awards. Her books of poetry include Visions of a Post-Apocalyptic Sunrise (2014), the Naomi Long Madgett Award winner What Keeps Me Sane (2013), and Chocolate City Latina (2005). Cintrón's work is anthologized in Manteca! An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets, Abandoned Automobile, Of Bars & Barrooms, Double Stitch: Black Women Write About Mothers & Daughters and others. She was a Callaloo Writing Fellow at Oxford and Brown Universities, earned a Michigan Council for the Arts Individual Artist Grant and a Metro Times Poetry Prize. A co-founder of The Sisters of Color Writers Collective, she created and served as the editor of its literary journal. As Alegra Verde, she has had a number of romantic short stories published and translated into Italian, German and Japanese. Visit her websites for more: esperanzacintron.com and alegraverde.com.

I Don’t Swoon: Chapter 1

The Reverend Cletus Jenkins was stretched out in the front yard of Miss Mattie’s whorehouse. Stiff like that wooden Indian that Virgil Parker sets outside his general store every morning, Jenkins looked like somebody had shoved him off the porch with the business side of a heavy boot and he’d landed splat on his back.
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