In the summer of 2009, Deborah Paredez joined fellow Tejana/o poets, Norma E. Cantú, Celeste Mendoza, Pablo Miguel Martínez, and Carmen Tafolla around Norma's kitchen table and dreamed of a world where Latinx poets could regularly gather in a community of creative inspiration and mutual support. They dreamed of and then set about building a "song-world," a canto-mundo, and by the next summer they were hosting their first writing retreat for Latine poets.

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CantoMundo is a national organization that cultivates a community of Latine poets through workshops, symposia, and public readings. Founded in 2009, CantoMundo hosts an annual poetry workshop for Latine poets that provides a space for the creation, documentation, and critical analysis of Latine poetry.

 

CantoMundo's first gathering convened in 2010 at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In an effort to serve poets across the country, CantoMundo has held workshops in various locations  including: University of Texas at Austin (2011-2016), Columbia University (2017-2019), University of Arizona Poetry Center (2020-2021), and Arizona State University’s Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing (2024-Present). CantoMundo has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Academy of American Poets, University of Texas's Center for Mexican American Studies, Columbia University's Division of Arts and Sciences, Poetry Foundation, Hawthornden Foundation, Academy of American Poets, and the Poetry Coalition.