The University of Arizona Press
April 1, 2026
The Academy of American Poets has announced that La única cosa importante / The Only Thing that Matters, written by Amanda Hernández and translated by Ana Portnoy Brimmer, was selected by poet and translator Aaron Coleman as the winner of the 2026 Ambroggio Prize. The Prize is given annually for a book-length poetry manuscript originally written in Spanish and with an English translation. The winners receive $1,000 and publication by the University of Arizona Press, a nationally recognized publisher of emerging and established voices in Latinx and Indigenous literature. This collection will be published in 2027. Previous winners include Manuel Iris; Octavio Quintanilla, author and co-translator with Natalia Treviño; Margarita Pintado Burgos, with translator Alejandra Quintana Arocho; and Elizabeth Torres.
Prize judge Aaron Coleman praised the collection’s “wild imagination fueling the courageous vulnerability and self-reflective voice of ‘The Only Thing that Matters,’” adding that it “dwells in the complexities of connection, the (unending) aftermaths of (neo)colonialism and how it has tried to scatter so many of us.”
Amanda Hernández is a Puerto Rican poet and editor based in Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico. Her poetry collections include La distancia es un lugar (2020), Estrategias atómicas (2018), and Entre tanto amarillo (2016), all published by La Impresora. Hernandez’s poetry has been commissioned for musical works by the Puerto Rican composer Angélica Negrón, including pieces performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and presented as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series. In 2021, she was named an inaugural Letras Boricuas Fellow supported by the Flamboyán Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.
Ana Portnoy Brimmer is a poet, translator, and organizer from Puerto Rico. Her poetry debut, To Love an Island (2021), won YesYes Books’ 2019 Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest. Her Spanish-language collection Que tiemble was published by La Impresora in 2023 and later translated into French as Aimer une île (Editorial Pulpo, 2025). Portnoy Brimmer is a 2025 Letras Boricuas Fellow and a 2024 Hedgebrook Writer-in-Residence. She received a 2023 MASS MoCA fellowship for artists from Puerto Rico and was named one of Poets & Writers’ 2021 Debut Poets. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (2024).
We are thrilled to be publishing this award-winning collection. Congratulations, Amanda and Ana!
