New York, NY (September 9, 2024)—The Poetry Coalition, a network of 25+ poetry organizations, is pleased to present its fourth cohort of the Poetry Coalition Fellowship program. These six individuals have been selected to receive paid fellowships, each at a different host organization within the Poetry Coalition: CantoMundo; In-Na-Po; Letras Latinas; Mass Poetry; O, Miami; and Urban Word. The fellows will work part-time over the course of a ten-month period beginning today, September 9, 2024. The fellows will also receive professional development opportunities.
The Poetry Coalition, which receives generous support from the Mellon Foundation, reaches more than 30 million individuals annually and cultivates readers, writers, and arts participants from all backgrounds through cutting-edge programs on poetry and community.
The goals of the Poetry Coalition Fellowship program are:
- to help diversify the leadership of the nonprofit literary field by encouraging more inclusion of individuals from under-represented communities, including people of color in particular, which does not exclude disabled persons or members of the LGBTIQA+ community;
- to develop future literary leaders regardless of educational background;
- to 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
- to increase the capacity of each host organization by having additional assistance.
“The Poetry Coalition amplifies the vital and empowering conversations that poets and readers are having across the nation,” said Ricardo Maldonado, President and Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets. “As a collective, we are thrilled to welcome these six fellows, who represent an expansive future for poetry that speaks to what’s important to our communities. It is vitally important to cultivate a new generation of poetry leaders, and we’re grateful to have the generous support of the Mellon Foundation to further this work.”
The 2024–2025 Poetry Coalition fellows are:
- At CantoMundo, Gabriel Ramirez
- At In-Na-Po, Emily Clarke
- At Letras Latinas, Cloud Delfina Cardona
- At Mass Poetry, L. Renée
- At O, Miami, Z. Yasmin Waheed
- At Urban Word, Cassandra Quayson
About Gabriel Ramirez
Gabriel Ramirez, author of IF PIT BULLS HAD A GOD, IT’D BE A PIT BULL (The Head & The Hand), is a queer Afro-Caribbean writer, performer, and educator. A 2023 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry at Adroit Journal, Ramirez has received fellowships from the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Conversation Literary Festival, CantoMundo, and the Miami Book Fair. They are a graduate fellow at The Watering Hole and a participant in the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshops. They have performed on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theatre, at Lincoln Center, the Apollo Theater, the National Museum of Romanian Literature, and other venues around the world. They have been published in Poetry, Muzzle Magazine, Adroit Journal, Split This Rock’s The Quarry, and BOMB, as well as anthologized in Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (Library of America, 2024); The Breakbeat Poets, Vol. 4: LatiNEXT (Haymarket Press, 2020); What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (Northwestern University Press, 2019); and Bettering American Poetry, Vol. 2 (Bettering Books, 2017).
About Emily Clarke
Emily Clarke is a Cahuilla poet, bead artist, and traditional Bird Dancer. Clarke recently served as the 2022–23 Graton Heyday Berkeley Roundhouse Writing Intern for Books and News from Native California. She is a two time recipient of the UC Riverside Chancellor’s Award for Poetry, a 2022 Pushcart Prize nominee, and a recipient of Hayden’s Ferry Review’s National Indigenous Poets prize. Clarke is also an MFA candidate at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
About Cloud Delfina Cardona
Cloud Delfina Cardona is an artist and writer from San Antonio, Texas. She is the author of What Remains (Host Publications, 2020) and the forthcoming poetry collection, the past is a jean jacket, winner of the Hub City BIPOC Poetry Series. Cardona is the cofounder of Infrarrealista Review, a literary nonprofit that publishes Texan voices. She has received editorial fellowships from Macmillan in collaboration with Latinx in Publishing and Texas State University’s Center for the Study of the Southwest, and has been a participant at the Tin House Workshop and the Macondo Writers Workshop. Her editorial work has received attention from Remezcla, Vice, and the San Antonio Current. Her poetry can be found in Prairie Schooner, The Boiler, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She currently works as the marketing coordinator at Gemini Ink.
About L. Renée
L. Renée is a poet, nonfiction writer, and collector of her family’s stories. She won the National Association of Black Storytellers’ 2023 Black Appalachian Storyteller Fellowship, representing the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the 2024 Gerald E. and Corinne L. Parsons Fund Award for Ethnology at the Library of Congress. She also received the 2023 Editor’s Choice Poetry Prize from The Arkansas International, the 2022 Rattle Poetry Prize, and Appalachian Review’s 2020 Denny C. Plattner Award. Nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and two Pushcart Prizes, her work has been published in Obsidian, Tin House Online, and Poetry Northwest. A recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and the Watering Hole, L. Renée holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University. She is a 2024–2025 Public Humanities Fellow for Virginia Humanities.
About Z. Yasmin Waheed
Z. Yasmin Waheed is a writer, translator, and multidisciplinary artist. She holds a B.A. in English Literature from Florida International University, where she was named the 2021–2022 Butler Waugh Fellow in Literature and later worked as a lecturer. She has experience in book publishing and broadcast television by way of Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, and WLRN-TV. She has had her writing nationally recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and most recently took part in O, Miami’s creative apprenticeship program, The Greenhouse.
About Cassandra Quayson
Cassandra Quayson is a Ghanaian American writer and a graduate of the New York University MFA program, where she was a Goldwater Fellow. She has worked as an adjunct instructor at NYU and currently works as a writing consultant at the Columbia School of Social Work. Her writing can be found in West 10th, Confluence, Plain China, and The Gallatin Review.
About Canto Mundo
CantoMundo is dedicated to serving Latinx poets and poetry across regional, aesthetic, ethnic, racial, linguistic, and gendered spectrums. Modeled after Cave Canem, CantoMundo hosts an annual poetry workshop for Latinx poets that provides a space for the creation, documentation, and critical analysis of Latinx poetry. Part of CantoMundo’s mission is to have various Latinidades in conversation with each other, from coast to coast, north and south, representing diverse poetic styles and heritages, whether in English, Spanish, Portuguese, or indigenous languages. CantoMundo’s 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, CantoMundo has fostered supportive communities and professional networks among hundreds of Latinx poets. Currently housed at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University, CantoMundo is staffed by a full-time program manager, who works with a CantoMundo Advisory Council staffed by founders and other community members who work collaboratively to advance the organization and its programs.
About In-Na-Po
Founded in 2020, In-Na-Po—Indigenous Nations Poets—is a national Indigenous poetry community committed to mentoring emerging writers, nurturing the growth of Indigenous poetic practices, and raising the visibility of all Native Writers past, present, and future. In-Na-Po recognizes the role of poetry in sustaining tribal sovereign nations and Native languages.
About Letras Latinas
Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, enhances the visibility, appreciation, and study of Latinx literature both off and on the Notre Dame campus. The initiative emphasizes programs that spur collaboration across disciplines and between organizations, such as Pintura/Palabra, Curated Conversation(s): A Latinx Poetry Show, and a new relationship with the Macondo Writers Workshop. In addition, Letras Latinas is expanding its publishing collaboratives with Red Hen Press, FlowerSong Press, Noemi Press, and others currently in development. Letras Latinas strives to foster a sense of community among writers, and place Latinx writers in community spaces. 2024 marks the organization’s 20th anniversary.
About Mass Poetry
Mass Poetry envisions a world where poetry catalyzes understanding and connection. Their innovative programs—such as U35, the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and their Poet-in-Residence program—empower diverse communities across the Commonwealth. Mass Poetry’s newest initiative, a teen spoken word program, aims to lift all voices and spark self-expression. Individuals can visit Mass Poetry in-person at GrubStreet’s Center for Creative Writing, where they now serve as an arts partner-in-residence.
About O, Miami
O, Miami celebrates South Florida through the empathy-building power of poetry. They educate and engage their community using a process called Civic Publishing, which entails providing resources for people to identify and express themselves through poetry, and publishing that poetry in public spaces and books. Their work invests in collaborative narratives of place, to create a more equitable future.
About Urban Word
Urban Word elevates youth voices and leaders at the intersection of the literary arts and civic engagement. Through the transformative power of the written and spoken word, Urban Word provides young, creative voices–often those that are marginalized–the tools, training, and platforms to rewrite the narratives that shape their lives and to own their agency in directing the future of their communities. As one of the oldest youth literary arts organizations in the United States, Urban Word annually serves more than 25,000 NYC youth between the ages of 13 and 19 through its local and school-based programming, including free virtual workshops, special events and slams, their weekly open mic, and their annual Summer Institute. As the founder of the National Youth Poet Laureate Program, they created and presently curate a model for youth poetry and civic engagement replicated in communities across the country.
About the Academy of American Poets
Celebrating its ninetieth anniversary in 2024, the Academy of American Poets is a leading publisher of contemporary poetry across the country. The organization annually awards $1.3+ million to more than two hundred poets at various stages of their careers through its prize program. It also produces Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly funded website for poets and poetry; established and organizes National Poetry Month each April; publishes the Poem-a-Day series and American Poets magazine; provides free resources to educators; hosts an annual series of poetry readings and special events; and coordinates a national Poetry Coalition that promotes the value poets bring to our culture. To learn more about the Academy of American Poets, including its staff, its Board of Directors, and its Board of Chancellors, visit https://poets.org/.
About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through its grants, the Mellon Foundation seeks to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.