CantoMundo

ABOUT

CantoMundo was founded in 2009 by Norma Elia Cantú, Celeste Mendoza, and Deborah Parédez as a national organization dedicated to the development, documentation, and celebration of Latinx poetry and poets. Modeled in spirit after workshop-retreat communities like Cave Canem (for Black poets) and Kundiman (for Asian American writers), it brings together an annual cohort of fellows for an intensive multi-day retreat featuring workshops, craft talks, and public readings, building a durable peer network that many fellows credit as central to their development. The organization has since expanded its footprint through partnerships, including the CantoMundo Poetry Chapbook Prize, published in collaboration with Arizona State University's Bilingual Press.

CantoMundo does not operate as a submission-based journal; poets apply to become fellows through a periodic open call, typically announced on the site alongside eligibility criteria and any application fee, though no live call is posted here at the time of this scrape. The chapbook prize runs as a separate contest administered through ASU's Bilingual Press site, with its own entry fee, reading period, and prize package (publication plus a cash award, standard for chapbook contests of this type). Because retreat cohorts and prize cycles are announced intermittently rather than on a strict annual calendar, poets interested in either opportunity should check the site directly near the start of the year for open application windows rather than assuming a fixed recurring deadline.