2026 CantoMundo Faculty & Keynote announced

CantoMundo is pleased to welcome the following faculty and keynote presenter to the 2026 Summer Retreat. Current CantoMundistas (fellows attending their second or third retreat) will join newly accepted fellows for three days of intensive, directed writing, reading, and reflection, led by faculty and staff.

All CantoMundo fellows are selected by a reading committee composed of graduate fellows and at least two outside readers (not affiliated with CantoMundo). Applications are being accepted now through Feb. 6, 2026. New fellows will be selected and announced in April, coinciding with National Poetry Month.

2026 Faculty member, Ariana Brown

Ariana Brown is a poet, teacher, and consultant who uses holistic practices and a social justice focus to help writers improve their skills. She is also an accomplished performance artist on the college circuit, performing at over 200 colleges in the last decade. Brown is the author of We Are Owed (Grieveland, 2021) and Sana Sana (Game Over Books, 2020). Her debut poetry EP, Let Us Be Enough, is available on Bandcamp.

Brown's workshop will include spoken word elements.

arianabrown.com

2026 Faculty member, Octavio Quintanilla

Octavio Quintanilla was among the early cohorts of CantoMundistas. He is the founder and director of the literature & arts festival, VersoFrontera; publisher of Alabrava Press; a former Poet Laureate of San Antonio, Texas; and is the 2025 Texas Poet Laureate. His latest collection, The Book of Wounded Sparrows, (TRP, 2025), was long-listed for the National Book Award.

Many may know Quintanilla for his visual art posted on social media. He brings his "Mark-making/Text-making" workshop to the 2026 retreat, offering innovative ways to kickstart future poems.

octavioquintanilla.com

2026 Keynote presenter, Patrick Rosal

Patrick Rosal is the author of five poetry collections. His interests span several disciplines and include several experimental collaborations. A self-taught musician, he has composed art songs for traditional & non-traditional instruments. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation,

e-flux, and Best American Poetry, among many others. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Research Scholarship program, and the Civitella Ranieri Residency. He is the inaugural director of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University-Camden, where he is a Distinguished Professor of English. His keynote presentation is tentatively titled "The Sacred and the Profane."

patrickrosal.com

If you want to apply to join the next cohort of CantoMundo fellows, click here.

Meet Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes

Although the COVID pandemic kept Restrepo Rhodes from participating in a CantoMundo retreat, they still embrace and have been embraced by CantoMundo. In this short Q&A following the release of their new book, Wayward Creatures, they share what moves their writing and their being in this world. Arizona State University instructor Cecilia Savala conducted the interview.

CantoMundo: Why did you decide to apply to Canto Mundo?

Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes: I originally applied to Canto Mundo because I value the growth and camaraderie that extend from community built in fellowships like this.

CM: How has being involved with CantoMundo influenced your work? Your practices? Your engagement with your communities?

HARR: I have yet to attend a retreat because of the pandemic, but I was the 2020 Palm Beach Poetry Festival CantoMundo fellow, and I still talk about the things I learned in the workshop with Ilya Kaminsky there, especially in the ethics and ethos of running a workshop. The practice of generosity and meeting writers where they are at was something I really valued witnessing and receiving. It very much informs my teaching of writing as well as my editorial practices.

CM: Do you write with a specific audience in mind? If so, who do you most want to reach with your writing?

HARR: As I write, I keep close a vast diversity of human and more-than-human life with whom I want to be in solidarity, essentially all of those whose voices have been subjugated, whose lives have been devalued in the face of heteropatriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism.

CM: What are you currently reading, or what’s the best thing you’ve read recently?

HARR: I’m midway through Eleni Stecopoulos’ Dreaming in the Fault Zone as well as Sandra Ruiz’s Left Turns in Brown Study. I’m rereading parts of Johanna Hedva’s How We Know When We Will Die, and I have the dear Aracelis Girmay’s newest book, Green of All Heads, in my tote bag, accompanying me everywhere. And Tilsa Otta’s And Suddenly I was Just Dancing is patiently waiting on my shelf for me.

CM: When you’re not writing, or the writing is not coming, what do you do?

HARR: I walk through nature or surf to connect with the aliveness around me. I will read a new book or go see art or films that will spark new thoughts in my mind. There is never a paucity of new material, ideas, creativity, knowledge, affects, and relations to encounter and be changed by, and that feeds my writing endlessly.

CM: MFA or no MFA?

HARR: I do not have an MFA.

CM: What can you share about your next project?

HARR: My next book is called Ampersand Organ: a more-than-human lyric and will be out next year (2026) with Milkweed Editions. It is a book of neuroqueer poetics and probably the weirdest and freest I’ve ever let myself be on the page. I feel so grateful for the space to do that, to be in the experiment that writing freely can be, toward the possibility that others may be getting freer in the encounter with one’s own work. That is what most moves my writing and my being in this world.

Meet Paul Martinez-Pompa

Martinez-Pompa joined CantoMundo in 2025. His publications include Pepper Spray, My Kill Adore Him, and Domestic Corpse, which was released in October. 2025. He spent time with poet and ASU instructor Cecilia Savala to discuss his work, the joy of finding a writing community, and the value of dope music.

CantoMundo: Why did you decide to apply to Canto Mundo?

PAUL MARTINEZ-POMPA: Writing is a solitary, isolating process (and necessarily so), but working in isolation for too long can be detrimental. I applied to CantoMundo to seek support and offer support to other writers on their respective writerly journeys.

CM: How has being involved with CM influenced your work? Your practices? Your engagement with your communities?

PMP: The CantoMundo workshop, under the guidance of Yesenia Montilla, was an intensive, generative writing practice. Under Yesenia's guidance and support, I was pushed beyond the limits of what I normally do during my own writing sessions. I discovered that I am capable of more than I realized. Raina J. Leon's workshop reminded me to dig deeper into my own personal, familial historical archives and surface with wisdom and light found in seemingly dark but revealing spaces.

Also, CantoMundo renewed my faith in fellow poets, as I was introduced to a cohort of beautiful souls — supportive, accepting peers.

CM: Do you write with a specific audience in mind? If so, who do you most want to reach with your writing?

PMP: My ideal reader is someone who reads carefully, creatively, and imaginatively, someone who takes their time with the poem and is intrigued by the subtle nuances of language, someone who is willing to participate in the creation of meaning as they work their way through the poem.

CM: Who are your literary influences?

PMP: Ana Castillo, Paul Celan, Li-Young Lee, Julia Story, Roberto Harrison.

CM: What are you currently reading, or what’s the best thing you’ve read recently?

PMP: Chad Heltzel's Recordings of Dead Languages, Simon Sedillo's Weapons; Drugs & Money (Crime, Corruption, and Community Based Liberation in the US/Mexico Neoliberal Military Political Economy); Diana Marie Delgado's Tracing the Horse.

CM: When you’re not writing, or the writing is not coming, what do you do?

PMP: I write anyway. I think it's important to approach writing the same way one approaches any kind of exercise. Most of the time, you're not going to feel your best, but you owe it to yourself to put in the time anyway.  Reading something new, rereading something you've read a thousand times before, looking really closely at a tree, or jotting down a word or fragment that has meaning to you--that all counts as writing.

CM: MFA or no MFA? 

PMP: Did I get an MFA? Yes. Do I recommend an MFA? Sure, but it's not necessary.  I learned how to be a much stronger reader in my MFA program. That continues to play a vital role in my writing craft. MFA programs can potentially be supportive environments, but can also be detrimental. I was very fortunate to have an amazing cohort of poets admitted the same year I was, who went through workshops and lit classes with me. I learned far more from them than from any other source in grad school. Ultimately, we teach ourselves how to write by reading and looking very, very closely at poems we love.

CM: What can you share about your next project?

PMP: Even though it's fashionable to do so, I don't typically work with a pre-planned project in mind. I love writing poems, period. Eventually, a bunch of poems might reveal themselves as a project later. I've been working on collage pieces that keep morphing into poems that maybe aren't collage at all. I'm playing with language and falling in love with poetry all over again. My project is to simply read and write poetry and listen to dope music.