Carlos Cumpián is a Chicagoan originally from Texas. The author of Human Cicada (Prickly Pear Publishing), Coyote Sun (March Abrazo Press), Latino Rainbow (Children’s Press/Scholastic Books), Armadillo Charm (Tia Chucha Press), and 14 Abriles: Poems, he has been included in more than thirty poetry anthologies, including the Norton Anthology Telling Stories. Cumpián has taught creative writing and poetry at Columbia College Chicago, in the Chicago Public Schools, and through community arts organizations including the National Museum of Mexican Art and Urban Gateways, and has also served as a writer-in-residence for the Illinois Arts Council.

Angie Trudell Vasquez is a poet, writer, editor, publisher, and activist. A former Ruth Lilly Fellow, she serves as the current Madison Poet Laureate (2020-2024) and is the first Latina to hold the position. Her books include My People Redux (Finishing Line Press, 2022), In Light, Always Light, and The Force Your Face Carries. In 2019, she guest-edited an issue of Yellow Medicine Review with Millissa Kingbird and in 2020 co-edited with then Wisconsin Poet Laureate Margaret Rozga the anthology Through This Door, which was released through her small press Art Night Books. Active nationally too, Angie has read poems, been a panelist, and presented at Split This Rock and AWP, and her poems have appeared in The Slow Down, Poetry, Poem-a-Day, About Place Journal, and in several anthologies. She received her MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2017, and in the summer of 2021 she became a Macondo Writers Workshop Fellow (or a Macondista).

Poetry Reading: Carlos Cumpián & Angie Trudell Vasquez