Mission
CantoMundo is a national poetry organization that cultivates a community of Latinx poets through workshops, symposia, public readings, and publications.
History & Vision
Founded around a kitchen table in 2009 by Norma E. Cantú, Celeste Guzmán Mendoza, Pablo Miguel Martínez, Deborah Paredez, and Carmen Tafolla, CantoMundo ["Song-World"] is a celebration of the worlds of song within Latinx communities, from its elders to its youth.
CantoMundo is dedicated to serving Latinx poets and poetry across regional, aesthetic, ethnic, racial, linguistic, and gendered spectrums. Our work is motivated by the understanding that Latinx voices, despite their historic silencing, have always resounded within the chorus of American poetry. Since our founding, we have fostered supportive communities and professional networks among hundreds of Latinx poets who have, in turn, created support systems for other writers of color in their own hometowns, established their own publishing venues, and secured major book prizes and positions as poets laureates, editors, and contest judges. These CantoMundistas are enriching and reshaping the landscape of the poetry of the Americas.
CantoMundo's dedication to Latinx poets and poetry among a diverse range of Latinx communities seeks to nurture generations of bi- and multi-lingual writers and readers. Since 2010, we have hosted annual retreats and regional readings and workshops and have partnered with organizations focused on immigrant rights, veteran support, and young writers to bring poetry to new communities and to bring new voices and aesthetics to American poetry. CantoMundo is currently housed at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.
LeaderSHip
NORMA ELIA CANTÚ
CantoMundo Founder
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Norma Elia Cantú is an award-winning poet and fiction writer as well as an internationally recognized scholar of borderlands literatures and cultures. She holds the Murchison Distinguished Professorship of the Humanities at Trinity University and is Professor Emerita in English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her most recent publications include the novel, Cabañuelas, and a poetry collection: Meditación Fronteriza: Poems of Love, Life, and Labor, along with the co-edited anthologies: Teaching Gloria Anzaldúa: Pedagogies and Practices for our Classrooms and Communities and meXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction. Soon to-be-published is the anthology Chicana Portraits: Critical Biographies of Twelve Chicana Writers and her single-authored book Fiestas in Laredo: Matachines, Quinceañeras, and the George Washington’s Birthday Celebration. She currently serves on numerous boards including the Conjunto de Nepantleras of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, the board of Macondo Writers Workshop and is a founding member of CantoMundo.
PABLO MIGUEL MARTÍNEZ
CantoMundo Founder
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Pablo Miguel Martínez’s collection of poems, Brazos, Carry Me (Kórima Press), received the 2013 PEN Southwest Book Award for Poetry. His chapbook, titled Cuent@, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016. Pablo’s work, which has been widely published and anthologized, has received support from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio, the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. He is a co-founder of CantoMundo. Pablo has taught English and creative writing at Our Lady of the Lake University, the Language and Culture Institute at Virginia Tech, Lone Star College-North Harris, and the University of Louisville. He has also worked as an administrator, grant-writer, and technical writer in the not-for-profit sector. Currently, he lives in New England, where he is at work on a hybrid-genre memoir.
DIANNELY ANTIGUA
Advisory Board Member, CantoMundo Faculty
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Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. She is the author of two poetry collections, Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019), which was the winner of the Pamet River Prize and a 2020 Whiting Award, and Good Monster (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). She received her BA in English from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she won the Jack Kerouac Creative Writing Scholarship, and received her MFA at NYU, where she was awarded a Global Research Initiative Fellowship to Florence, Italy. She was a finalist for the 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her poems can be found in Poem-a-Day, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. In 2022, she was named the 13th Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, the youngest and first person of color to receive the title. In 2023, she received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship to launch The Bread & Poetry podcast, and in 2024, she was awarded an Excellence in Artistry Award from Black Lives Matter New Hampshire. She currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the University of New Hampshire as the inaugural Nossrat Yassini Poet in Residence. Antigua is a former CantoMundista.
CARMEN TAFOLLA
Advisory Board Member, CantoMundo Founder
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Carmen Tafolla is an award-winning poet and children's author, performance artist, speaker, and university professor from San Antonio, Texas. She was named State Poet Laureate of Texas in 2015, is a CantoMundo Co-Founder, and in 2018 became the first Latina to become President of the Texas Institute of Letters. The author of more than 30 books and Professor Emeritus of Transformative Children's Literature at UT San Antonio, she is the recipient of numerous awards including the Americas Award, two Tomás Rivera Book Awards, six International Latino Book Awards, and the Art of Peace Award.
CELESTE GUZMÁN MENDOZA
CantoMundo Founder
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Celeste Guzmán Mendoza is a poet, playwright and essayist born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. She is the co-founder of CantoMundo and co-directed the organization for ten years with Deborah Paredez. She has participated in the Macondo Writers Workshop and the Hedgebrook retreat for women writers. Guzmán Mendoza received her BA in Theatre and English Literature from Barnard College, Columbia University, her MFA in Poetry from the Bennington Writers Seminars and her PhD in Higher Education Leadership and Policy from the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Beneath the Halo (Wings Press 2013). Her work has been widely published and anthologized.
DEBORAH PAREDEZ
Advisory Board Member, CantoMundo Founder
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Deborah Paredez is a poet, performance scholar, and cultural critic. She is the author of the critical study, Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory (Duke 2009), and of the poetry volumes This Side of Skin (Wings Press 2002) and Year of the Dog (BOA Editions 2020). Her poetry and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, Poetry, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. She lives in New York City where she teaches creative writing and ethnic studies at Columbia University. She is a co-founder of CantoMundo and served as a co-director from 2009-2019.
Staff
BELINDA ACOSTA
Director
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Belinda Acosta has a PhD in English with a specialization in ethnic studies from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and holds an MFA in fiction from the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a long-time member of the Macondo Writers Workshop founded by Sandra Cisneros. She has written and published plays, short stories, essays, and her journalism and creative nonfiction has appeared in The Austin Chronicle, the San Antonio Express-News, NPR's Latino USA, and The Texas Observer and elsewhere. Her two novels are Sisters, Strangers, and Starting Over, and Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz both published by Hachette Book Group.