Bio

 

Rebelené is the chosen moniker of Zelene Pineda Suchilt, a Mexican born CHí-CHí (CHilanga/CHicana) award-winning poet and filmmaker living in New York City. She works with a range of media including writing, painting, performance, and film production. Co-director of the 15 year old multilingual Colectivo de Poetas en Nueva York,  her debut poetry collection, Music for butterflies/Música para mariposas (Editorial Ultramarina 2022) available now.

When Zelene was undocumented and 16 years-old, she founded the annual poetry festival ‘The Word Around Town Poetry Tour‘, which ran for 10 years. She participated in the 2012 Librotraficante Caravan as Librotraficante Rebelené. She received the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Young Visionary Award from The National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago in 2009.

Her literary work has been published in Punto de Partida Magazine, Cuthrat’s Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century Anthology, Rogue Scholars Press, Luna Luna Magazine, Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature, Free Press Houston, Quiet Lunch Magazine, The Panhandler Quarterly, Librotraficante Times and MANGO Publications. She was a VONA/Voices Writers Workshop Fellow in 2014 and has completed residencies at Doña Helen’s in 2014 Fresno, California and most recently, Kettle Pond in 2019.

Born in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Zelene migrated to Houston via NAFTA and studied Anthropology in El Paso, Texas. She lived the undocumented experience for 13 years, and began organizing for immigrant rights at age 16 in Houston, El Paso, TX and New York. She is an anti-racist, anti-patriarcal feminista in Abya Ayala.