L. A. Johnson interviews past Fellow Eduardo Martínez-Leyva for the Los Angeles Review of Books about his debut poetry collection, “Cowboy Park.”

EDUARDO MARTÍNEZ-LEYVA AND I met on our first day at Columbia’s MFA program. We shared teachers, poems, and life, and began what I think of now as an unending conversation. In the more than 10 years since we met, I’ve watched Martínez-Leyva create and shape the poems that make up Cowboy Park (2024), his debut book of poetry.

Though he labored on this book that whole time, a Fine Arts Work Center fellowship in Provincetown, Massachusetts, allowed all that hard work to crack open—for the book to finally come to fruition. The book looks different from what he and I first discussed all those years ago, having expanded to encompass his adult experiences and his family history in his hometown of El Paso, Texas. These poems detail a brother’s deportation, a mother’s survival of a hate crime mass shooting, and the speaker’s own sexual and personal awakening.

On a Saturday morning, from New York and Los Angeles, Martínez-Leyva and I met over Zoom to discuss poetic craft, the impact of hometowns, and what went into the coalescence of his debut collection.

To read the full interview in the Los Angeles Review of Books, visit here.