Demetria Martinez (born July 10, 1960) is an American activist, poet, and novelist.^[1][2]

She was born on July 10, 1960, where she was raised by her grandmother in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is a graduate of Princeton University with BA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.^[1]

In 1988, Martinez was charged with conspiracy for allegedly transporting two Salvadoran women refugees into the United States;^[3] she was working as a freelance reporter covering religion and the Sanctuary Movement at the time.^[4] She was later acquitted of the charges.^[3][5] During the trial, prosecutors used Martinez's poem "Nativity, For Two Salvadoran Women" in an attempt to build a case against her, a decision Martinez has called a "major error."^[6]

Martinez worked as a religion reporter for the Albuquerque Journal in August 1986.^[7]

She has been an editor for the National Catholic Review in Tucson, Arizona, since 1990,^[1] and teaches in the annual William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts Boston.^{[citation needed]}

Martinez has been associated with the Sanctuary Movement and with Enlace Comunitario, an Albuquerque-based organization that serves immigrant families experiencing domestic violence.^[8]

• International Latino Book Award for best biography (2006): Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana (University of Oklahoma Press,^[9] 2005) ^[3]
• Western States Book Award for fiction: Mother Tongue (Ballintine, 1994) ^{[1][3] [10]}
• Thirteenth Annual Chicano Literary Arts Contest (first prize: poem^[11]): "Turning" (Bilingual Press Review, 1989)
• American Book Award (2013)^[12]

• Three Times a Woman: Chicana Poetry (includes the poem "Turning"), Bilingual Press/Review (Tempe, AZ), 1989 ISBN 978-0916950910
• MotherTongue, Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue (Tempe, AZ), 1994, translated into Spanish by Ana Maria de la Fuente and published as Lengua madre, Seix Barral (Barcelona, Spain), 1996 ISBN 978-0345416568
• Breathing between the Lines: Poems, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1997 ISBN 978-0816517985
• The Devil's Workshop, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 2002 ISBN 978-0816521975
• Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana (Chicana and Chicano Visions of the Americas series) ISBN 978-0806137223
• The Block Captain's Daughter (Chicana and Chicano Visions of the Americas series) ISBN 978-0806142913