Award winner Martín Espada among writers in new fellowship

NEW YORK » This year’s winner of the National Book Award for poetry, Martín Espada, is among 20 Puerto Rican writers chosen as the inaugural fellows for a program co-founded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Flamboyan Foundation’s Arts Fund.

The Letras Boricuas Fellows are a blend of new and established voices who also include the fiction writers Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa and Francisco Font Acevedo, the creative nonfiction writers Mercy Romero and Vanessa Mártir and children’s writer Mrinali Álvarez Astacio.

Each fellow receives a $25,000 grant.

“Twenty vibrant Puerto Rican voices make up this remarkable initial cohort, each one resonant and powerful,” poet Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, said in a statement. “These are writers who convey the depth and breadth of Puerto Rico’s stories and histories across literary genre and a range of styles, and who affirm the vital significance of the word through their work.”

Court hands ‘Making a Murderer’ subject Avery latest defeat

MADISON, WIS. » The Wisconsin Supreme Court has rejected a request by Steven Avery to review his conviction for killing a young photographer in 2005, a case that became the focus of a popular Netflix series “Making a Murderer.”

Avery has been fighting unsuccessfully for years to have his conviction overturned. His latest appeal asked the court to review three issues: failure to disclose evidence, the destruction of bone fragments and ineffective assistance of counsel.

The court denied Avery’s petition for review without commenting.

Avery, 59, is serving life in prison for killing Theresa Halbach, 25, on his family’s property on Halloween 2005. Halbach had gone to the Avery family salvage yard to photograph a vehicle that Avery planned to sell.