Brenda Cárdenas

Brenda Cárdenas was born in Milwaukee. She received a BA from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1987 and an MFA from the University of Michigan in 1995. 

Cárdenas is the author several chapbooks, two edited anthologies, and the full-length collection Boomerang (Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 2009). She has collaborated with musicians, composers, visual artists, and choreographers. In 2023, her poem “Para los Tin-Tun-Teros,” set to choral music by Daniel Afonso, was published by Hal Leonard Music, and in 2024, performed by the National Concert Choir at Carnegie Hall.

Cárdenas served as the Milwaukee poet laureate from 2010 to 2012. In 2014, the Library of Congress recorded a reading of her work for their spotlight on U.S. Hispanic writers. In 2024, she became professor emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she was awarded the Outstanding Woman of Color in Education Award. She has been teaching creative writing and U.S. Latinx literatures for the last seventeen years. In 2025, Cárdenas was appointed the poet laureate of Wisconsin.