Artist of the Month > 2026 Artists
ARTIST PROFILE
NAME: Carlos Andrés Gómez
LOCATION: Atlanta, GA
ORIGIN: New York, NY
ART: Poet / Actor / Writer / Performer / Interdisciplinary Artist
MAIN GENRE: Spoken Word Poetry / Theater
TRAINING: Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, MFA in Creative Writing, Acting training in Meisner, Chekhov, Adler, and Stanislavski techniques at Stella Adler Studio, NYC, The Acting Corps – LA at the Bob Krakower Master Class – NYC, Harold Long-Form Improv training at the Upright Citizens Brigade, NYC. Kristin Linklater voice training with Andrew Borthwick-Leslie, Philadelphia. Vocal Training with Matt Farnsworth, NYC.
ARTS AFFILIATIONS: The Artists Forum, The Excelano Project, Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA), The Recording Academy, SAG-AFTRA.
Carlos Andrés Gómez is a Colombian American poet, actor, playwright, memoirist, and interdisciplinary artist from New York City. He is the author of the poetry collection Fractures (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020), selected by Pulitzer Prize winner and 19th U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey as the winner of the 2020 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, and the memoir Man Up: Reimagining Modern Manhood (Penguin Random House, 2012). Winner of the Foreword INDIES Gold Medal and the International Book Award, Gómez has been published in Poetry magazine, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, New England Review, Academy of American Poets’Poem-a-Day series, The Yale Review, The Sunday Times, Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World (W. W. Norton, 2022), and elsewhere. In August of 2021, Carlos released his debut studio album, Opus, a groundbreaking spoken word album in collaboration with musician/producer, Brent Shuttleworth, and GRAMMY® Award–winning record producer, Joe West. The trio released an encore collaboration, their sophomore album Volta, in September of 2022.
A star of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, TV One’s Verses and Flow, and Spike Lee’s #1 box office movie Inside Man with Denzel Washington, Carlos partnered with John Legend on Senior Orientation, a program to counteract bullying and champion inclusive masculinity among high school students. Gómez has performed at more than 1,500 colleges, universities, independent schools, conferences, and festivals across all 50 U.S. states and 31 countries spanning six continents. Carlos is widely known for his viral poems, “What Latino Looks Like,” “Where are you really from?” and others, which have garnered more than 12 million views online. A magna cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and alum of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, Carlos was named 2021 Georgia Author of the Year by the Georgia Writers Association, 2016 Best Diversity Artist by Campus Activities Magazine, and Artist of the Year at the 2009 Promoting Outstanding Writers Awards. He co-founded The Excelano Project in 2001 and spent many years facilitating writing workshops on Rikers Island through Voices Unbroken.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Star and contributing writer of Emmy® Award-winning Respect Yourself television spots by At Large Films. Costar of Spike Lee’s highest-grossing film to date, Inside Man. Star and writer of solo play, Man Up, which sold out three runs at theaters in New York City and did 30-night run at Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. Star of the concert film The NEXT Movement on PBS. Performed with Savion Glover on Broadway to celebrate the Nuyorican Poets Cafe’s 35th anniversary.
Three-time winner of The Artists Forum Spoken Word Competition (Best Live Performance – 2024, 2025), Best Enhanced Performance (2022). 2009 Best Short Play (Man Up), Downtown Urban Theater Festival. Voiced a character for the iconic video game Red Dead Redemption. Performed for sold out Barclays Center as part of WE Day UN. Appeared in an episode of original Showtime series The L Word. 2006 Toronto International Poetry Slam Champion and 2010 Buffalo/Niagara International Poetry Slam Champion. 2018 Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize.
2019 Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry. 2023 Rubery International Book Award for Poetry. 2024 Poetry International Chapbook Prize. 2024 Yeats International Poetry Prize. 2024 North American Book Award, Gold Medal for Poetry. Headlining show at Expo 2020 Dubai. Drew a standing ovation at the Obama White House in October of 2016. Two TEDx talks (“The Gift of Fear,” “Eight Lessons from Fatherhood”). Voted “Favorite Poet” of episode on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. Star, writer, and producer of the short film Abuelita, which won 31 film festival awards.
LATEST WORKS: Bilingual chapbook, Patrilineation (winner of the 2025 Alta California Prize), was released this past June by Gunpowder Press.
WORK SAMPLE: Live performance at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (2019)
WORK SAMPLE: Performing with Savion Glover on Broadway (2008)
WORK SAMPLE: Awe & wonder—are you still there? (2021)
WORK SAMPLE: Magic (2022)
WORK SAMPLE: Live performance of Where are you really from?” (2020)
WORK SAMPLE: HBO’s Def Poetry Jam (2007)
WORK SAMPLE: Gifted (For Maya) (2021)
WORK SAMPLE: TEDx talk: The Gift of Fear (2012)
WORK SAMPLE: TV One’s Verses and Flow: My Journey (2018)
WORK SAMPLE: Freestyle at Bradford Literature Festival (UK) (2024)
INTERVIEW
Please describe your artistic themes
So much of my creative work is an extension of my personal work attempting to dismantle and then reimagine how we think about masculinity, fatherhood, engaged global citizenship, and what it means fight against injustice and oppression on all fronts (systemic, interpersonal, ideological, linguistic, cultural, internalized, etc.).
More than anything, I want my work to excavate grief and trauma as a means of unearthing the kind of tenderness that enables catharsis, healing, and change.
Please describe your creative process
My creative process is rooted in being radically present, curious, vulnerable, and daring to run toward the thematic and craft possibilities that terrify me.
If failure isn’t likely, I’m generally not too interested in the project. I want to be far out of my comfort zone, forced to stretch beyond what I thought might be doable. I want the greater purpose and urgency driving whatever I’m working on to be my two north stars.
What are your artistic goals? What do you need to achieve them?
My biggest goal is to do for anyone who engages with my work what Martín Espada did for me: I was seventeen and in one of the hardest moments of my life. Espada read from his poetry collection, Imagine the Angels of Bread, and it not only pulled me back from the precipice but altered the trajectory of my life. He, and his poetry, saved me. Quite literally.
I feel so blessed that I get to travel the country and the world performing for packed rooms of strangers—from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to Harvard and the World Expo, from maximum security prisons and inpatient psychiatric units to the Edinburgh Fringe and Broadway—I am reminded every single day of the life-saving power of art. I get to look into the faces of my audience members and be reminded every time I walk on stage how high the stakes are. Often, I imagine seeing my seventeen-year-old self in the back row and do everything in my power to make sure he stays here.
What are your views on the industry?
I think the industry is in a moment of tremendous flux, uncertainty, and existential crisis. The instability has so many gatekeepers risk-averse in such a way that they’re inclined toward what they think are the safest bets: art that is too often sterilized of not just social and political conviction but, also, the textured grooves and sharp edges inherent in the human experience.
As my great acting sage Bob Krakower once told us, “The biggest risk you can take is choosing to play it safe. To make a big choice, go all-in, commit one million percent is actually the safer bet because if you do anything less than that you actually just assure failure.”
That’s the only kind of work I aspire to make.
What advice would you give to emerging artists?
My advice to emerging artists is three-fold:
1. Read, study, and watch the most wide-spanning range of artistic genres possible. Go to the blues club, watch ballet, read plays and scripts and poems and novels and hybrid works that explode distinctions and traditions and can’t be categorized. See the opera on last-minute standing room tickets, try to feel what you can’t understand in Italian, consider how an aria might reshape the volta in your contemporary American sonnet, how you listen to your scene partner before you say goodbye in that final scene, the ways in which a baseline might unlock your spine when you dance.
2. Get a community that nurtures you as much as they challenge you. This could be just one or two people. Discuss and debate what you notice and think about the art with which you engage. Set a schedule to draft new work and give each other candid and honest feedback. Commit to holding each other accountable and holding each other up. Know that the life you save on stage tonight is a more worthy goal than any trophy on a shelf.
3. Your most important learning is by doing. So do the damn thing. Embrace failure and rejection as not just an inevitable but honorable feature of your chosen path. If you’re a poet—like I am, first and foremost—hit the open mic, poetry slam, artist salon. Do and do and do. Read and read and write and revise and read and revise. And perform. And repeat and repeat and repeat.
I believe in you.
WEBSITE: CarlosLive.com
INSTAGRAM: @CarlosAGLive
FACEBOOK: @CarlosOnTour
YOUTUBE: @ExcelanoPoet
TUMBLR: CarlosAndresGomez.tumblr.com
TWITTER: @CarlosAGLive
BLUESKY: @CarlosAGLive
LINKTREE: @CarlosAGLive
SPOTIFY, iTUNES, APPLE MUSIC: Opus | Volta
