Meet Karla Cordero, a 2024 COURAGE to WRITE Writer of Note working on her poetry collection, Chillona / Crybaby.
Chillona/Crybaby is a collection of poems documenting the impact of chronic illness upon the Indigenous/Mexican-American identity, while navigating the medical system and finding survival through childhood memories.
“I hope to create community for those isolated by disability, showcasing vulnerability as a tool of strength and shifting the perspective of chronic illness from deficit to one’s cultural capital
Karla Cordero is a Chicana poet, educator and a 2021 California Arts Council Established Artist Fellow. Her poetry collection, How To Pull Apart The Earth, is a San Diego Book Award winner and finalist for the International Latino Book Awards. She is the Executive Director for the non-profit, Glassless Minds, providing open mic nights and free writing workshops. Karla is a professor of composition and creative writing at MiraCosta College and San Diego City College.
An exciting update from Karla: “I’m excited to have two new poems from the working manuscript featured in Huizache Magazine coming out this fall. I also just got back from San Antonio, Texas, as a participant of Macondo, a writers workshop founded by Sandra Cisneros.”