CINDY WILLIAMS GUTIÉRREZ

Cindy Williams Gutiérrez is a poet, playwright, producer, educator and artistic collaborator. The author of three poetry collections and five produced plays, she is inspired by the silent and silenced voices of history, herstory and her own story. Her latest collection, This Tender Geography, explores family, mortality and forgiveness. Her second collection, Inlay with Nacre: The Names of Forgotten Women, was awarded the Willow Books’ 2018 Editor’s Choice Poetry Selection and a 2016 Oregon Literary Fellowship. Cindy was selected by Poets & Writers Magazine as a 2014 Notable Debut Poet for the small claim of bones (Arizona State University's Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe), which placed second in the 2015 International Latino Book Awards. She received the 2017 Oregon Book Award for Drama for her play Words That Burn. Cindy is the recipient of a 2025 Humanities Washington Award for K-12 Education. 

 

Cindy's poems have appeared in Borderlands, Calyx, Crab Orchard Review, Harvard’s Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México’s Periódico de poesía, Portland Review, Benedictine University's Quiddity, and ZYZZYVA., among others. Her work has been anthologized in Basta: 100+ Latinas Against Gender Violence (University of Nevada) and Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace (Lost Horse Press).

 

An avid collaborator with other artists, Cindy has recently performed her new poetry with classical guitarist Ben Wheeler and jazz standup bass player Dave Nolet at Seattle's Hugo House and The Confluence: Art in Twisp. Accompanied by pre-Columbian musician Gerardo Calderón, Cindy performed her Aztec-inspired poems at the 2009 Associated Writers Program (AWP) Conference in Chicago and at Northwest libraries, colleges, and museums through the Humanities Washington Inquiring Mind series as well as Multnomah and Clackamas County Library community programs. Her poems have been exhibited in The Confluence in Twisp, Washington; the Maryhill Museum of Art in Goldendale, Washington; the Newport Visual Arts Center in Newport, Oregon; and the Tillamook Forest Center in Tillamook, Oregon. 

 

Cindy co-produced her dramatic work In the Name of Forgotten Women with CoHo Productions in Portland, Oregon in 2022.  Acclaimed by Willamette Week as "a vibrant call to action, " this dynamic choreopoem--dramatizing poetry with live music, movement, projection and ritual--explores the global oppression of women and testifies to their resilience in 15 countries around the world. Her award-winning play Words That Burn premiered at Milagro Theatre in Portland, Oregon in 2014. Words That Burn was recorded by Oregon Public Broadcasting for Literary Arts' Archive Project in 2018 and was produced in 2017 at the Linkville Playhouse in Klamath Falls, Oregon and at the Merc Playhouse in Twisp, Washington. Her play A Dialogue of Flower & Song was featured in the 2012 GEMELA (Spanish and Latin American Women’s Studies—pre-1800) Conference co-sponsored by the University of Portland and Portland State University.

 

Cindy earned an MFA from the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast Program with concentrations in Mesoamerican poetics, drama, and creative collaboration. A passionate educator, she has taught creative writing to youth in every grade from K-12 in Oregon and Washington through the Bernstein Artful Learning Program, Methow Arts Alliance, Portland Art Museum, Public School Funding Alliance, Right Brain Initiative, Wordstock, and Writers in the Schools. She has facilitated adult poetry workshops and seminars through Annie Bloom's Books, the Attic Institute, Literary Arts' Delve Seminars, the LiTFUSE Poets’ Workshop, the Oregon Council for Teachers of English, the Oregon Poetry Association, USM's Stonecoast MFA Program, and the Washington State Poet Laureate's One River, Many Voices project. Cindy is co-founder of Los Porteños, Portland’s Latinx writers’ collective, and of the Methow Valley's Confluence Poets, and the founding producer of El Grupo de ’08, a Lorca-inspired, Northwest collaborative-artists’ salon.

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