Brenda Cárdenas

Brenda Cárdenas is the current Wisconsin Poet Laureate and recipient of a 2026 Academy of American Poets’ Poet Laureate Fellowship. She has authored Trace (Red Hen Press, 2023), winner of the 2023 Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry and silver winner of Foreword Review’s Indie Poetry Prize; Boomerang (Bilingual Press); and three chapbooks. She also co-edited the anthologies Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance and Entre el corazón y la tierra: Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest. Her poems and essays have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, such as American Poetry Review, Poetry, Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, and Prairie Schooner (which awarded her their Strousse Award). She is Professor Emerita of English at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee where she lives with her husband, the poet Roberto Harrison, and their dog Maya.