María Esquinca is a Xicana educator, poet and journalist. A fronteriza, she was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico and grew up in El Paso, Texas. She currently teaches newcomers who are recent immigrants at San Francisco International High School. Her debut collection, “Where Heaven Sinks” was the 2024 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize winner, and was selected by Juan Felipe Herrera.
Before that, she was a producer for The Bay podcast, a production of KQED. Prior to that, she was New York Women’s Foundation IGNITE Fellow with Latino USA, and a 2020 Report for America Corps Member at Radio Bilingue.
She is an MFA graduate from the University of Miami. In 2017, she graduated from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication with a Master of Mass Communication.
She has focused her reporting on immigration, social justice, and issues that affect communities of color. She has interned at WLRN, The New York Times Student Journalism Institute and was a Dow Jones News Fund Business Reporting Intern at Crain’s Detroit Business.
She was an Ethics and Excellence fellow for the student-led, investigative program, News 21. During her time at News 21 she reported on water contamination in colonias along the border. She’s reported on minimum wage laws and investigated racial profiling by the police department in El Paso.
During her undergrad at the University of Texas at El Paso, she was a reporter and editor at the student newspaper, The Prospector. Her story about how Student Government Association managed their funds won a first place award for in-depth reporting from the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association. She also won a second place award for Best Breaking News from the College Media Association for her coverage of a protest for the 43 missing Ayotzinapa students that went disappearing in Mexico.
Her poetry has appeared in Waxwing, The Florida Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Scalawag, Acentos Review, and No Tender Fences: An Anthology of Immigrant & First-Generation American Poetry. In 2018, she won the Alfred Boas Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets judged by Victoria Chang. Her book reviews and interviews have appeared in Adroit Journal and ANMLY.
AWARDS
San Francisco Press Club Podcast News, 2024
Second Place “Nursing Home Staff Shortages Leave Patients Waiting in Hospitals” (KQED)Third Place “Applying For Student Aid Was Supposed to Be Easier This Year. It Wasn’t” (KQED)
Society of Professional Journalists NorCal, 2024
First Place Interview (Radio/Audio/ Podcast) “Hope and Loss in Gaza: A Bay Area Doctor Reflects on His Aid Mission” (KQED)
San Francisco Press Club, Television/Video/:Podcast-News, 2023
First Place, “When The Tenderloins Addiction Crisis Goes Viral, The Bay podcast (KQED)
Second Place,“Black Women Are Changing California’s Victim System” The Bay podcast (KQED)
Green Eyeshade Awards, 2021
Second Place Best Feature Writer (WLRN)
Society of Professional Journalists Region 3, 2020 Mark of Excellence Awards
First Place Radio Feature (WLRN)
Arizona Press Club, 2018
Nina Mason Pulliam Environmental Journalism Award for Environmental Reporting “Troubled Water” (News 21)
Online News Association, 2018
Pro Am Student Award “Troubled Water” (News 21)
Edward R. Murrow Award, 2018
Winner Excellence In Digital Reporting, college students, “Troubled Water” (News 21)
María Esquinca 