Mario José Pagán Morales is a Nuyorican poet, actor, spoken word artist, and cultural worker, born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and raised in the South Bronx. His debut collection of poems is called Receta (great weather for media, 2022).

His work is anthologized in The BreakBeat Poets, Volume 4: LatiNEXT (Haymarket Books, 2020), Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea (great weather for MEDIA, 2019), and in the 2019 “The Performance of Breath” edition of The Acentos Review (Peggy Robles-Alvarado and Lupe Méndez, eds.) He has performed his work on various stages, including La Casita at Lincoln Center For the Performing Arts. His poem “Origin Story” was turned into a short film of the same title, produced by Hakeem “Rebel Poet” Coriano and directed by Maya Nichole Pagán.

Pagán Morales is a founding member of the Títere Poets, a collective of poets challenging machista cultural norms of masculinity and vulnerability. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and co-founder of La Esquina Poetry Showcase, a hybrid showcase of Latinx poets and writers in the United States and beyond. He makes his home in Brooklyn, New York.