Nuestros Corazones Literarios (Our Literary Hearts): A Latino and Latina Chicago Writers Showcase

Carlos Cumpián moderated a select trio of Latino and Latina authors, including Angelica Julia Dávila,  Miguel Marazana, and Paul Martínez Pompa, as they shared their stories, poems, and novel excerpts. The readings were powerful and varied, with each author taking time to tell stories of their art and heritage.  

Angelica Julia Dávila is author of poetry chapbook, Bilingual Bitch (Abode Press, 2025). She is a multidisciplinary artist that focuses on writing, comedy, and performance. She received her PhD from the Program for Writers at University of Illinois Chicago. Her literary work has been published in a variety of magazines, and she was an invited poet for 2024’s Poesía en Abril (International Festival of Spanish Poetry in Chicago). She was also a featured poet in “Pop-up Gallery Readings with Contratiempo” as part of ECOS: A Chicago Latine Poetry Festival by the Poetry Foundation. Her work is an exploration of the Latinx and bilingual identity, autistic self-expression, and mental borderlands. Davila's Bilingual Bitch explores the complexities of being Mexican yet growing up in the United States through multilingual expression, generational conflict, and longing for a homeland while existing in a limbo. With a sharp tongue that disrupts both English and Spanish, Davila's poems document familial and US/Mexican history through oral knowledge and chisme while lamenting lost histories. Bilingual Bitch is for the pochas everywhere who find themselves always wondering “which country” is their country.

Miguel Marzana is a Bolivian writer and poet. His collections are Descomposiciones - Aceite de un cielo (Verso Destierro, CDMX., 2019) and most recently, Poemas de Chicago (Amargord, Madrid, 2024). He’s a graduate of the Graham School at the University of Chicago and earned a degree in Literary Criticism and Creative Writing from the Autonomous National University of México (UNAM) School of Writing. Currently Marzana serves as an editor and coordinator of the influential Chicago-based arts and literature magazine Contratiempo. He is also co-founder and co-organizer of “Coloquio de Escritores de Chicago / Colloquium of Chicago Writers” at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU). Many of his creative works have been translated into Catalan, English and Quechua, appearing in print and available on-line both in the U.S. and abroad. In 2024, he independently established Marzana Editorial, a Spanish-language imprint to promote local poets, essayists and playwrights working towards reaching a greater Spanish-language readership. Marzana resides in Chicago.

Martínez Pompa is a papa, poet and professor who earned degrees from The University of Chicago (B.A.) and Indiana University (M.F.A). His first book, My Kill Adore Him (University of Notre Dame Press), was selected for the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize. His most recent book, Domestic Corpse, is slated to be published by Match Factory Editions in fall 2025. His work has been widely anthologized, including in What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Trump Era, and The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. Chicago Public Radio commissioned his poetry for a project called "In Verse," which aimed to explore the emotional weight of gun violence. He is currently on the editorial board at Packingtown Review, a journal of literature and the arts. My Kill Adore Him is a poetry collection which interrogates masculinity, race, language, consumerism, and cultural identity. The poems honor los olvidados, the forgotten ones, who range from the usual suspects brutalized by police to factory workers poisoned by their environment, from the victim of a homophobic beating in the boys’ bathroom to the body of Juan Doe at the Cook County Coroner’s Office. Some of the poems rely on somber, at times brutal, imagery to articulate a political stance while others use sarcasm and irony to deconstruct political stances themselves.