In 2026, Brenda Cardenas was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Brenda Cárdenas’s ekphrastic youth project will, in conjunction with her larger Wisconsin Poet Laureate project for which she is holding ekphrastic relays between poets and visual artists in seven regions, teach eight, free three-day workshops for middle and high school students. She will teach one workshop in each major region of the state and two in Milwaukee, where students will produce ekphrastic poems inspired by works of visual art. Students will create visual pieces (e.g., drawings, paintings, collages, etc.) inspired by their writing and that of their peers. These poems and artworks will become part of Cárdenas’s larger laureate project, and for each region’s workshop, she will produce a saddle-stitched chapbook anthology for each workshop participant. In each region, she will partner with arts and literary organizations that provide youth programming to help her gain access to public schools and libraries where some of the workshops will take place.