Martha Bátiz  Martha Batiz Zuk (born 1971) is an award-winning, Mexican-Canadian writer, who was born and raised in Mexico City, but has been living in Toronto since 2003. She started publishing in 1993 at age 22. By age 25 she had been awarded the most prestigious Creative Writing scholarships available in Mexico: from the Mexico’s Institute of Fine Arts (1993–94); from the former Mexican Writers’ Centre (Centro Mexicano de Escritores in 1994–95) where famous writers like Carlos Fuentes, Rosario Castellanos, Homero Aridjis, among many others also received scholarships at the beginning of their careers; and Young Creators from the National Fund for the Culture and the Arts (1995–96). In 1996 she was the first Mexican to ever be awarded an "accesit" in the International Short-story Contest "Miguel de Unamuno" in Salamanca, Spain, where her story competed against 1,708 entries from Latin America and Spain. In the anthology of the winning stories, published by the Caja Salamanca y Soria in 1997, Martha is the only female and also the youngest writer. She appears alongside writers such as Juan Manuel de Prada. Martha held a weekly column in the Cultural Section of newspaper "Uno Mas Uno" and its cultural supplement "Sábado" from 1993 to 1999. She has also collaborated with magazines such as "Nexos", "Etcetera", "El Universo del Buho" and "El Reto". In Canada, she published articles in the Hispanic newspaper "El Correo Canadiense". Her story "Ants" was published in "Exile Literary Quarterly" in the Summer Issue of 2006. Some of her short stories are featured online in the following websites www.ficticia.com, www.torontohispano.com, , www.palabrasdiversas.com and Diálogos Online Forum. Her articles, chronicles, reviews and short stories have appeared in diverse newspapers and magazines also in Spain, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Peru and Canada. Her short-stories have received awards in literary contests in Mexico and Spain. She published a short-story collection called "A todos los voy a matar" ("I’m Going To Kill Them All") in 2000. "La primera taza de cafe" ("The first cup of coffee") was published by Ariadna Press in Mexico City in May 2007, featuring a collection if selected articles, chronicles and short-stories published from 1993 until 1999 in "Sabado", the cultural supplement of Mexican newspaper Uno Mas Uno.