Join us for a reading and panel discussion celebrating Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, edited by Rigoberto González.

The event features anthology contributors Francisco Aragón, Brenda Cárdenas, Mauricio Kilwein Guevara, Roberto Harrison, and Raina J. León, along with host and moderator Michael Dowdy. Each will give a short reading, including poems of their own as well as a poem by an anthology contributor who isn’t present. After these readings, Michael Dowdy will pose questions to the panelists regarding their own work, as well as topics related to contemporary Latinx poetry and poetics.

Please also join us for a related workshop with Brenda Cárdenas taking place on Sat. Apr. 12 from 2–5 pm. See WORKSHOPS for more information.

Both programs are presented in partnership with Letras Latinas, the literary initiative of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, which strives to enhance the visibility, appreciation, and study of Latinx literature with an emphasis on programs that support newer voices, foster a sense of community among writers, and place Latinx writers in community spaces.

Both are also part of Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home, a major public humanities initiative taking place across the nation in 2024 and 2025, directed by Library of America and funded with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Emerson Collective.

Library of America is a nonprofit organization that champions our nation’s cultural heritage by publishing America’s greatest writing in authoritative new editions and providing resources for readers to explore this rich, living legacy.

Francisco Aragón is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants. His books include, After Rubén (2020), Glow of Our Sweat(2010), and Puerta de Sol (2005). He’s also the editor of, The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (2007). A native of San Francisco, he is on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, where he directs their literary initiative, Letras Latinas and teaches courses on Latinx poetry and creative writing. His work has appeared in over twenty anthologies, and he has read his work widely, including at universities, bookstores, art galleries, the Dodge Poetry Festival and the Split This Rock Poetry Festival. For more information, visit: http://franciscoaragon.net

Current Wisconsin Poet Laureate Brenda Cárdenas has authored Trace (Red Hen Press), winner of the 2023 Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry and silver winner of Foreword Review’s Indie Poetry Prize; Boomerang(Bilingual Press); and three chapbooks. She also co-edited Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistanceand Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest. Her poems have been published in such venues as Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Braving the Body, and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Anthology, and Kinship: in a World of Relations. Cárdenas has served as Milwaukee’s Poet Laureate and is Professor Emerita of English at UW–Milwaukee.

Michael Dowdy’s books include Tell Me about Your Bad Guys (University of Nebraska Press, 2025), Poetics of Social Engagement (Wesleyan University Press, 2018, coedited with Claudia Rankine), Urbilly (Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, 2017), and Broken Souths (University of Arizona Press, 2013). He teaches Latinx literature at Villanova University.

Mauricio Kilwein Guevara writes in multiple genres: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama. Of Ecuadorian and European descent, he was born in Boyacá, Colombia, and raised in the largest city in Appalachia: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of a collection of micro-fictions and prose poems entitled Autobiography of So-and-So, three collections of poetry, and a book of translations published in Madrid, Spain. He has won regional, national, and international awards for his writing, including the Contemporary Poetry Series Competition (Postmortem, U of Georgia Press) and an International Latino Book Award (POEMA, U of Arizona Press). His comic play, The Last Bridge/El último puente, received a staged reading off-Broadway with Urban Stages. His collaborative, inter-artistic dramatic work, Autobiography of So-and-so, received a full production at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is Professor Emeritus of English at UW–Milwaukee.

Roberto Harrison is a Panamanian American poet and artist living in Milwaukee since 1991. He published his ninth book, Isthmus to Abya Yala, through City Lights in 2024. He has served as editor and publisher and most recently coedited the Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance in 2017. He was Milwaukee Poet Laureate from 2017–19.

Raina J. León, PhD, is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work. She has received fellowships and residencies and attended retreats with The Watering Hole, the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, MacDowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland, and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of the Acentos Review, an online quarterly and international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She is a recipient of a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Grant. She currently supports poets and writers at the Stonecoast MFA.

Poetry Reading & Panel Discussion: Places We Call Home