The fellowship is designed to give a post-graduate writer–without a book–the time, space, and support to finish her first manuscript. The fellowship is also made to give the fellow professional experience in arts-administration with the Center, and editorial experience with West Branch. They provide health insurance and an award of $20,000. All is renewable for a subsequent year.

Congratulations, Carolina!!!

http://www.pw.org/content/latino_poets_connect_at_cantomundo

CantoMundo joins Cave Canem and Kundiman– established organizations that support Black and Asian American poets respectively–in providing generative and critical space for poets of color in the United States. In honor of the inspiration provided by these organizations, CantoMundo featured Cave Canem co-founder Toi Derricotte as its inaugural Keynote Speaker in 2010, and Vekas Menon, Kundiman board member as the 2011 Keynote Speaker.

photo by JW Stovall

CantoMundo is proud to announce that one its inaugural fellows, Eduardo Corral, has garnered a 2011 Whiting Writers’ Award. Corral, winner of the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, was one of ten recipients to received this year’s coveted prize.

Poets Aracelis Girmay and Roberto Tejada will be our Faculty for CantoMundo 2012!

Check out the Admission page on our site, www.cantomundo.org, for more details on how to apply for admission.

Deadline for applications is Saturday, December 31, 2011.

Check out our FaceBook page for some great photos. We’ll be loading some up on the site in the coming weeks.

Thank you to all the Fellows and to Benjamin Alire Saenz and Naomi Ayala for making CantoMundo 2011 so memorable.

Award-winning poets Naomi Ayala and Benjamin Alire Sáenz will read from their acclaimed poetry collections at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Arts Center at 7 p.m. on Saturday, July 9, 2011. The event is free and open to the public. A reception and book signing will follow.

This free event is hosted by CantoMundo, a national poetry workshop dedicated to supporting and developing Latina/o poetics. CantoMundo provides a space where Latina/o poets can nurture and enhance their poetics; lecture and learn about aspects of Latina/o poetics currently not being discussed by the mainstream publishers and critics; and network with peer poets to enrich and further disseminate Latina/o poetry. The Center for Mexican American Studies of the College of Liberal Arts of the University of Texas at Austin is the primary sponsor of CantoMundo. www.cantomundo.org

Biographies
Naomi Ayala is the author of two books of poetry, Wild Animals on the Moon and This Side of Early. Her third book of poems, Calling Home: Praise Songs and Incantations is forthcoming from Bilingual Review Press. Her translation of Argentinean poet Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s most recent book of poetry, The Wind’s Archeology/La arqueología del viento, was published by Vaso Roto Ediciones in Mexico in 2011. Naomi lives in Washington, DC and teaches at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD and the Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at UMASS-Boston. She is a member of the Board of Directors of DC Advocates for the Arts. Distinguishing herself as a poet who writes in both Spanish and English, Naomi’s most recent work in Spanish appears in Al pie de la Casa Blanca: Poetas hispanos de Washington, DC (North American Academy of the Spanish Language, 2010). Her most recent work in English is included in The Poet’s Cookbook: Recipes from Germany and Poems by 33 American Poets with German Translations.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s first collection of poetry, Calendar of Dust (1992), won the American Book Award. His first novel for young adults, Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood (2004) was an ALA Top Ten Book for Young Adults and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His second novel for teens, He Forgot to Say Goodbye (2010) won the Tomas Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award and the Southwest Books Award. Saenz is the author of a collection of short stories, Flowers for the Broken (1992), the novel Carry Me Like Water (1995), several children’s books and six collections of poetry. Saenz has received the Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship and the Lannan Poetry Fellowship.

More than 20 nationally recognized Latino poets from across the U.S. will gather in Austin, Texas, for CantoMundo, a national poetry workshop dedicated to supporting and developing Latina/o poetics.

On Friday, July 8, 2011, at 7:30 p.m., these poets will present a free poetry reading that will be open to the public at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Arts Center. A reception will follow the reading.

These participants in CantoMundo represent the best of Latina/o poetry in the United States. Some of the featured award-winning and nationally recognized poets include: Millicent Borges Acardi (New York City), Francisco Aragón (Washington D.C.), Oscar Bermeo (California), Eduardo Corral (Arizona), Carolina Ebeid (Austin, Texas), Amalia Ortíz (Texas/California), Luivette Resto (California), and ire’ne lara silva (Austin, Texas), among others.

CantoMundo provides a space where Latina/o poets can nurture and enhance their poetics; lecture and learn about aspects of Latina/o poetics currently not being discussed by the mainstream publishers and critics; and network with peer poets to enrich and further disseminate Latina/o poetry. For the complete list of CantoMundo poets, please visit www.cantomundo.org.

Diana Marie Delgado is an accomplished Chicana poet, creative writing teacher, and community activist. She has published poetry in over 20 major literary magazines and online journals, and has taught poetry to at-risk youth and disadvantaged adults across the United States. She has held positions as an Associate Editor in a NYC publishing house and was the Assistant Director of Correspondence at the William J. Clinton Foundation prior to her current position as a Family Literacy Coordinator with the Coalition for Hispanic Family Services. Her most recent awards were a month-long writing residency at the Anderson Center in Minnesota and a scholarship to participate in Monarch Theater’s Intensive Playwriting Workshops with Migdalia Cruz and John Jesurun. She is a member of the Con Tinta and Macondista writing community, and a graduate of the Creative Writing program at Columbia University.

The June 14 reading will comprise readings by poets Deborah Paredez and Carmen Tafolla, who are CantoMundo Fellows and two of the organzation’s Co-Founders. Established in 2009 as a national retreat-workshop for Latina and Latino poets, CantoMundo (www.cantomundo.org) held its inaugural events in Albuquerque last summer. This year the retreat-workshop will take place in Austin. CantoMundo’s mission is to provide a space for “the creation, documentation, and critical analysis of Latina/o poetry,” which it accomplishes through “workshops, symposia, and public readings.”

“This reading affords CantoMundo a magnificent opportunity to share the power and myriad splendors that are Latina/o poetry—an integral but still largely underappreciated corner of U.S. letters—with a wider public,” said Deborah Paredez. “We are thrilled to bring a little bit of Texas—originally Mexican soil—to New York City,” added Carmen Tafolla. “We hope this is only the first of what will be an ongoing exchange.”

The venue for this reading is the open-air library known as the Bryant Park Reading Room, a project of the Bryant Park Restoration Project. In case of inclement weather, the reading will be held at the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, located at 20 West 44th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

Following the reading, the poets will sign copies of their books. (Books will be for sale at the event.)

For more detailed information, please contact Deborah Paredez at dparedez@cantomundo.org or Paul Romero at (917) 438-5123.

Biographies of the participating poets:

Deborah Paredez is the author of the poetry volume, This Side of Skin (Wings Press, 2002), and the critical study, Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory (Duke University Press, 2009), which garnered the 2010 LASA Latino Studies Book Award Honorable Mention and the 2011 NACCS Chicano Studies Book Award Honorable Mention. Paredez is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin and is a Co-Founder of CantoMundo, a national retreat-workshop for Latina/o poets.

A recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Americas Award, the Tomás Rivera Award, the Art of Peace Award, Carmen Tafolla is the author of more than 20 books, among them, the award-winning Sonnets to Human Beings, and The Holy Tortilla and a Pot of Beans. Tafolla’s books have been published in English, Spanish, German, and Bengali. Currently Writer-in-Residence for Children’s, Youth and Transformative Literature in the Bicultural Bilingual Studies Department at the University of Texas-San Antonio, she is a Co-Founder of CantoMundo and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.

Millicent Bórges Accardi
Diana Marie Delgado
Carolina Ebeid
Benjamín A. García
Rodney Gomez
Laurie Ann Guerrero
Leticia Hernández-Linares
Manuel Paul López
Carl Marcum
Juan J. Morales