A person with long, wavy dark hair and glasses smiles warmly, touching their cheek with one hand. They wear a light-colored top and have a small tattoo on their wrist. The background is dark and blurred.

Noelia Cerna

Noelia Cerna is a Costa Rican poet based in Fayetteville, AR. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from Westminster College in Missouri. Her poems have appeared in TERSE. Journal, The Revolution (Relaunch), The North Meridian Review, and Plants & Poetry Journal. Cerna is a reader and poetry feedback editor for Tinderbox Poetry Journal, an assistant poetry editor for Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, an associate editor for Sibling Rivalry Press, a writing mentor for PEN America’s Prison Writing Mentorship Program, a writer for Powerful Latinas Rising, the board president for Ozark Poets and Writers Collective, and an editor for Nomadic Press.


Articles by Noelia Cerna

Side-by-side black and white portraits: Benjamin Frandsen, with short hair and a mustache on the left, and Noelia Cerna, pen in hand and smiling, her wrist tattoos visible—a nod to the power of prison writing as self-expression.
Prison and Justice Writing
Wednesday November 11

Longing to be Heard

These dual essays were written by Benjamin Frandsen and Noelia Cerna, 2020 honorees for the PEN America/L’Engle-Rahman Prize for Mentorship.