Mateo Acuña is a poet, librettist, and actor who splits his time between Auburn and Seattle, Washington. He was the 2023-2024 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate and currently serves as the 2024-2026 Auburn Poet Laureate. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in the Gay & Lesbian Review, EchoX, The Washington State Queer Poetry Anthology, Abya Yala: Indigenous Connections in Latin America, Creative Colloquy, Bird Brains: A Lyrical Guide to the Birds of Washington State, and more. As a librettist in the Seattle Opera Creation Lab, he developed the twenty-minute chamber opera Blood Dawn of the Inti Sun in collaboration with composer Mina Pariseau. His first chapbook, Dear Spanish, was published in 2024 through Poetry Northwest and explores the languages of identity, heritage, and belonging. He is currently working on a manuscript about the settler colonial history of Auburn in verse.

2025 Writers Program