MAMMAL: Steel Toe Books Poetry Award

Ana María Caballero is a Colombian-American multidisciplinary artist and poet whose work critically examines how biology shapes cultural structures, particularly gendered ideals of sacrifice. Through a practice spanning poetry, performance, sculpture, and installation, Caballero explores memory and the evolution of the book in the contemporary and digital world. Caballero's fusion of literature and technology has positioned her at the forefront of digital poetry. She co-founded theVERSEverse, a digital poetry gallery, and became the first living poet to sell a poem at Sotheby's. She's exhibited at leading museums, including HEK Basel, the Francisco Carolinum, Museo Miguel Urrutia, the Ashmolean Museum, and Mad Arts Museum. She's performed at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Art Basel, Art Genève, and Fundación Juan March. Her works have appeared in Artnet, Art Newspaper, Poetry International, BOMB, El País, and NPR. In 2025, she was named a top 50 Latin Woman to Follow by Forbes. She's the author of 6 books and a recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Beverly International Literature Prize, and Colombia's José Manuel Arango Poetry Prize, among other literary recognitions.