OCEANSIDE — Oceanside cultural leaders have selected the city’s first poet laureate: Karla Cordero.
The inaugural poet laureate will serve a two-year term, creating “engaging and conceptually rich works” inspired by Oceanside’s diverse community, “with many untold stories and new ones made each day,” according to a joint announcement from the Oceanside Library and Cultural Arts Department and the Oceanside Arts Commission.
“Karla will work throughout the city to elevate the literary arts while making poetry accessible to all,” the statement continues.
Cordero is the author of the debut poetry collection How to Pull Apart the Earth and the recipient of a San Diego Book Award and a Bronze Latino Book Award. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, among other publications.
Cordero helped lead the San Diego Poetry Slam Team to a fourth-place finish at the 2013 National Poetry Slam competition. She has also performed for NBC 7 San Diego’s “Art Pulse,” TBN’s “Juice Live,” the Old Globe Theatre and at universities, conferences and festivals nationwide.
She has received the “Courage to Write” grant from the deGroot Foundation, a California Arts Council Fellowship, the San Diego State University Global Diversity Award, and the San Diego Writers Festival Community Educator of the Year Award.
Cordero is also a fellow of Macondo, VONA, the Community of Writers, CantoMundo, Tin House and the Pink Door Writing Retreat.
She serves as executive director of Glassless Minds, a nonprofit arts organization, and teaches creative writing and composition at MiraCosta College and San Diego City College.
More information about Cordero is available at karlacordero.com or her Instagram, @karlaflaka13
The Coast News has reached out to Cordero for comment.
