Carlos Cumpian

Carlos Cumpián a Chicagoan originally from Texas. Human Cicada (Prickly Pear Publishing, 2022) marks his fifth poetry collection: Coyote Sun (March Abrazo Press, 1990), Latino Rainbow (Children’s Press/Scholastic Books, 1994) Armadillo Charm (Tia Chucha Press, 1996), and 14 Abriles: Poems (March Abrazo Press, 2010). In 2000, he was recognized with a Gwendolyn Brooks Significant Illinois Poet Award. He is a member of Macondo Literary Group and co-founder and publisher of March/Abrazo Press, the first Indigenous, Chicana and Latino small press in Illinois.

Cumpián has been included in more than thirty poetry anthologies, including the Norton Anthology Telling Stories. Before becoming a teacher, he worked with various social service organizations such as ASPIRA and public relations for the Chicago Public Library. Cumpián has taught creative writing and poetry through community arts organizations including the National Museum of Mexican Art, Urban Gateways and as a writer-in residence funded by the Illinois Arts Council.

Cumpián taught in the English Department of Columbia College Chicago and in the Chicago Public School and Charter school system. In addition, he has hosted live readings with Galeria Qui Que & La Palabra Series.

His most recent essays were for The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame on Chicago poets Ana Castillo and Sandra Cisneros and for Poetry Magazine on the photographer Diana Solis as well as his educational essay, “Learned to Read at My Momma’s Knee,” in the anthology With a Book in Their Hands: Chicano/a Readers and Readerships Across the Centuries (University of New Mexico Press, 2014). His first in a series of true supernatural accounts, “A Chicago Premonition” was published in Hombre Lobo #2, True Xicanax Spooky Stories, (Ponte Las Pilas Press, Los Angles, Ca. 2021) Cumpián is currently working on his “anti-war years” memoir Accidental Rebel: 1967-1976.