Cindy Williams Gutierrez  

Poet-dramatist Cindy Williams Gutiérrez collaborates with artists in theatre, music, and visual art. Her collection, the small claim of bones, is forthcoming from Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe (Arizona State University). Poems and reviews have appeared in Borderlands, Calyx, Harvard’s Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, UNAM’s Periódico de poesía, Portland Review, Quiddity, Rain Taxi, Rattle, Windfall, and ZYZZYVA, among others. A staged reading of her play, A Dialogue of Flower & Song, was a featured event of the 2012 GEMELA (Group of Spanish and Latin American Women’s Studies) Conference and the opening event of the Miracle Theatre’s 2012 La Luna Nueva festival. Other plays have been produced by the Miracle Theatre Group and Insight Out Theatre Collective in Portland, Oregon. She has performed her Aztec-inspired poetry accompanied by pre-Hispanic music at the 2009 AWP (Associated Writing Programs) Conference and at colleges, museums, and libraries throughout the Northwest. Her poems were exhibited in People, Places and Perceptions: A Look at Contemporary Northwest Latino Art at the Maryhill Museum of Art in Goldendale, Washington.

Cindy earned an MFA from the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast Program with concentrations in Mesoamerican poetics and creative collaboration. She has taught creative writing to adults through the Attic, Annie Blooms Books, the Oregon Poetry Association, and the Stonecoast MFA Program, as well as to middle and high school students through the Portland Art Museum, Right Brain Initiative, Wordstock, and Writers in the Schools. Cindy lives in the hinterlands of Oregon City with her husband and two Australian shepherds. 

She will be accompanied with Gerardo Calderon who will join Cindy in performance of her Aztec-inspired poetry. He plays a variety of Latin stringed instruments and pre-Hispanic percussion and flute. Gerardo is an award-winning composer and the musical director of Grupo Condor.