Francisco Martínezcuello is a playwright, fiction writer, essayist, and journalist. His work explores war, memory, identity, and the ways people reach for connection.
His play Salsa Night brings together two Marines — a Dominican-American infantryman and a Haitian-American Mortuary Affairs sergeant — on a U.S. base in Iraq in 2004. The play received the 2023 Lieutenant William Broyles Award and was presented in a July 2025 industry reading at The Players in New York, directed by Eric Tucker and presented by Savage Wonder.
His creative writing has appeared in Hippocampus Magazine, Twisted Tongue Press, Hobart, The Line Literary Review, and elsewhere. A Marine Corps veteran, he earned his master’s degree in journalism at UC Berkeley in 2022, concentrating on narrative writing. He currently serves as disaster recovery reporter for The Plumas Sun.
What is the Motorcycle Writer?
“I started to write when I started to ride. ”
“My writing journey started in therapy. I was asked to write about my trauma and during one session I was asked what is something I always wanted to do but never got to or had the chance? My answer – I always wanted a motorcycle, the response? What’s stopping you?“
