Mateo Quispe

​Mateo Quispe (Little Shell Chippewa, Quechua) is a queer and trans poet, composer, and visual artist. At nineteen, he made his literary debut as the Seattle Youth Poet Laureate. An Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, he currently serves as the poet laureate of his hometown, Auburn, Washington, where he was awarded for the Canoe Poetry Nooks Project. He has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Jack Straw, UrbanWordNYC, EchoX, and the Future Perfect Project. You can find his work in places such as Poets.org, Creative Colloquy, EchoX, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Bird Brains: A Lyrical Guide to the Birds of Washington State, and The Madrona Project. Notable performances include the 2025 National Book Festival, the 2024 White House Youth Policy Summit, the Department of Education, Seattle Town Hall, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle’s Queer Youth Pride, and with the Auburn Symphony Orchestra. He was a librettist in the Seattle Opera Creation Lab, which culminated in the creation of the chamber opera Blood Dawn of the Inti Sun, a retelling of the Andean Legend of the Ayar Brothers. His first chapbook, Dear Spanish, was published in 2024 by Poetry Northwest and explores the languages of identity, heritage, and belonging.