January 2025 includes: Opportunities for CantoMundistas, AWP ambassador request, information about our 2025 CantoMundo faculty & keynote speaker, a note from the director, and more! Click on the image to read the entire newsletter.
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NEWS
Meet CantoMundo’s new director, Belinda Acosta, succeeding Jacqueline Balderrama who served in that role until July 2024.
Belinda Acosta has a PhD in English with a specialization in ethnic studies from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and an MFA in fiction from the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a long-time member of the Macondo community of writers founded by Sandra Cisneros. She has written and published plays, short stories, essays, and her journalism and creative nonfiction have appeared in the Austin Chronicle, the San Antonio Express-News, NPR's Latino USA, and the Texas Observer among other publications. Her two novels are Sisters, Strangers, and Starting Over, and Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz both published by Hachette Book Group. She comes to CantoMundo after serving as Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the Center for the People in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Meet her below in a quick Q&A interview:
CANTOMUNDO: Nebraska to Arizona. That’s quite a leap.
BELINDA ACOSTA: Yes, and it’s a leap I happily took. I will miss the four seasons, but I will not miss shoveling snow. And I wanted to return to the Southwest. I lived in Austin, Texas for much of my adult life, but moved to Arizona directly from Nebraska. The Southwest feels like home, so when this position opened, I had to apply.
I first learned of CantoMundo when I wrote feature articles about its inaugural year for the Austin Chronicle and Poets and Writers Magazine. I am honored to be able to bring my skills to help build the future iteration of CantoMundo which is significant in ensuring Latinx representation in the national literary landscape and in building supportive networks for Latinx artists.
CM: What makes you excited to come to work every day?
BA: Well, first, the Piper Center House where CantoMundo now calls home is lovely. I work alongside Piper Center Staff, who have been overwhelmingly supportive and approachable. I'm thrilled to meet colleagues across the ASU campus who are eager to collaborate. Finally, I've always liked the energy of a university campus and I’m glad to be working in the heart of one.
CM: Are you a poet?
BA: I am a writer with a life-long admiration for poets. I am constantly dazzled by how poets and poetry can distill a thought, an emotion, an experience. When poetry is great, it makes me forget I’m a writer, because I’m reveling in where the poetry takes me. I’m not examining its components like a writer or editor.
CM: At a reading you hosted, someone asked the presenters if poetry or poets were losing relevance nowadays. What do you think?
BA: If I didn’t think poetry had relevance, I wouldn’t have applied for or taken this job. I wouldn’t have moved across three states to work with artists refining an art form I think is relevant and crucial. Audre Lorde says, “Poetry is not a luxury.” In our current social climate, that is truer now more than ever.
In her first year, Acosta will be supported by Poetry Coalition Fellow, Gabriel Ramirez. A current CantoMundo fellow, poet, and community organizer in the literary arts, a Q&A interview with Ramirez will follow soon.
Acosta can be reached at Belinda.Acosta@asu.edu
CantoMundo, 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. Its work is motivated by the understanding that Latinx voices, despite their historic silencing, have always resounded within the chorus of American poetry. Since its founding the organization has 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 poet laureates, editors, and contest judges.
Since November 2023, CantoMundo has been housed at Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University, a community-facing center directed by Alberto Ríos, ASU Regents Professor as the Katharine C. Turner Endowed Chair in English and Arizona’s first poet laureate.
POETRY COALITION
FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR FELLOWS
CantoMundo, a founding member of the Poetry Coalition, is accepting applications for a paid Poetry Coalition Fellowship position. This position is 20 hours per week from September 9, 2024 to June 30, 2025. The total stipend is $20,000 plus $1,100 toward health care.
The Poetry Coalition is a national alliance of nearly thirty organizations dedicated to working
together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and the important contribution poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. Members are nonprofit organizations whose primary mission is to promote poets and poetry, and/or multi-genre literary organizations that serve disabled poets and poets of specific racial, ethnic, or gender identities, backgrounds, or communities. All members present poets at live events. Each year, members present programming across the country on a theme or topic of social importance. The Poetry Coalition is coordinated by the Academy of American Poets and we are grateful to the Mellon Foundation for its support of this
work.
The Poetry Coalition Fellowship Program is a three-year program. The goals of this are to help:
diversify the leadership of the nonprofit literary field by encouraging more inclusion of individuals from under-represented communities;
develop future literary leaders regardless of educational background;
introduce the individuals who are interested to nonprofit literary arts management, fundraising, programming, and editorial work, providing experiences that will be useful as they seek jobs and inspiring them to consider working in the literary field; and
increase the capacity of our individual organizations by having additional assistance.
Paid fellowships will not “level the playing field.” Opportunity in our country is not equally distributed across class, ethnic, gender, and racial lines. And we alone cannot erase and undo the biases, barriers, discrimination, and prejudice that exist in our country. But we hope poetry organizations can be out front in building equity and inclusivity in literary arts organizations and spaces.
POETRY COALITION FELLOW | CANTOMUNDO
POSITION DESCRIPTION
HOST ORGANIZATION MISSION: CantoMundo is a national poetry organization that cultivates a community of Latinx poets through workshops, symposia, public readings, and publications. 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. CantoMundo is currently housed at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.
POSITION OVERVIEW: The Poetry Coalition Fellow will report to and work with the CantoMundo Program Manager to meet the needs of CantoMundo while learning the basics of non-profit programs and management. Work is in-person (Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona) and remote.
FELLOW RESPONSIBILITIES
Committing to 20 hours per week for the entire ten-month fellowship
Adhering to the rules and policies of CantoMundo/Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing/ASU as appropriate
Assisting with any of the following:
Community outreach, including serving as an ambassador for CantoMundo in ASU and surrounding communities
Marketing and promotion
Internal and external communication, including content production for the website, social media, e-blasts, newsletters, press releases
Grant writing and/or fundraising
Programming and logistics of virtual and site-specific programs and events, primarily CantoMundo’s annual retreat
General administration, including maintaining databases and archives
Attending and participating in meetings with other Poetry Coalition fellows and with CantoMundo and Piper Center leaders to foster community, professional development, and create a peer learning group
Participate in the Poetry Coalition’s fall convening and professional development trainings
Complete an evaluation at the end of the fellowship year
FELLOW QUALIFICATIONS
Passion for Latino/a/x poetry and familiarity with and/or knowledge of the poetry community
Interest in literary arts programming, administration, and management
Demonstrated experience in the areas listed above
Note: We welcome all applicants, including those who are enrolled in or have recently graduated from MFA programs in creative writing.
TO APPLY: Please submit a cover letter, 1-2-page resume, 2 references, and a 1-page explanation of your interest in Latinx poets and poetry. Please send these as a single PDF document to this CantoMundo Dropbox. Title your document: Poetry Coalition Fellow Application_Your Last Name_Your First Initial. No calls please. Applications accepted through July 3, 2024.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for the position of Poetry Coalition Fellow without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.
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