The University of Arizona Press
May 28, 2025
The Texas State Legislature appointed Octavio Quintanilla to be Texas Poet Laureate for 2025-2026. He is the author of Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, winner of the 2024 Ambroggio Prize from the Academy of American Poets.
Quintanilla, who writes and teaches in San Antonio, was one of several state artists appointed by the Legislature. In the press release about state artists, State Representative Will Metcalf, Chairman of the House Committee on Culture, Recreation, and Tourism said, “It’s a pleasure to recognize the 2025-2026 State Artists for their official designations. The arts in Texas are extremely important to a vibrant and thriving state.” Gary Gibbs, executive director for the Texas Commission on the Arts, said, “These Texas State Artists are the best of the best. Their work defines our character of place and reflects the distinctive qualities that make Texas unique.”
Congratulations, Octavio!
About the book:
In Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, Octavio Quintanilla takes us on a profound journey to witness what it means to erase those boundaries devised by genre and politics intent on stifling memory, imagination, and creativity.
Presented in Spanish with English translations, this poetry collection comprises lyric and concrete poems—or frontextos—that explore intimacy and different shades of violence as a means to reconcile the speaker’s sense of belonging in the world. From the opening poem to the last in the first section, Quintanilla captures the perilous journeys that migrants undertake crossing borders as well as the paths that lovers forge to meet their endless longing. These themes are skillfully woven by Quintanilla, guiding us back and forth across the Rio Grande to encounter the apparitions of the disappeared and to witness the willingness of many to risk life and limb for a better life.
