Lucas Cardona lives in Abilene, Texas, where he serves as a visiting assistant professor of English at McMurry University. He earned his MFA in poetry from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and is currently working on several books. Brainland, a poetry manuscript, has been listed as a finalist for the Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize from Conduit Books & Ephemera (2024), the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award (2025), the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize from Gunpowder Press (2026), and the New American Poetry Prize (2026). His poems and stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Greensboro Review, Cimarron Review, Raleigh Review, New Ohio Review, Anacapa Review, Moon City Review, Places on the Way: a Poetry Road Trip (an anthology from June Road Press), and other journals. 

“When I say you to what isn't there I mean me.
It is as if our language did this to us,
As if, at some point, we became others in it”

—Larry Levis, “Col Tempo”