Meet a Poet: Chris Santiago

Chris Santiago’s debut collection Tula was selected by A. Van Jordan as the winner of the Lindquist & Vennum Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Copper Nickel, Conduit, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, and American Public Media’s The Slowdown. His collaboration with composer Lembit Beecher and ethnographer Todd Lawrence, Say Home, was commissioned by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and received its world premiere in 2019. A Loft Poetry Mentor and Fellow of the McKnight Foundation, the Mellon Foundation/ACLS, and Kundiman, he received his PhD from the University of Southern California and recently joined the Faculty of the School of Critical Studies at CalArts in Santa Clarita, CA. He lives in Pasadena.