After a nationwide search, two Miami natives are taking the reigns of the city’s premier poetry nonprofit.
O, Miami, which organizes poetry programming and hosts an annual poetry festival in April, announced Melody Santiago Cummings and Caroline Cabrera will lead the organization as executive director and artistic director, respectively. The co-directors succeed the organization’s founder and former executive director P. Scott Cunningham, who stepped down from the role earlier this year.
“There’s no one better than Melody and Caroline to lead O, Miami into a new phase of growth,” Cunningham said in a statement. “They’ve each been instrumental in building O, Miami into the organization it is today, and I’m thrilled to support them as they guide us into the organization we’ll need to become tomorrow.”
Ever since O, Miami’s first festival in 2011, the group has expanded its reach with yearround programming, educational opportunities and book publishing. O, Miami is perhaps best known for its goal of making sure every person in Miami-Dade County encounters a poem during the month of April, or National Poetry Month. That includes poetry on fake parking tickets, billboards and fruit stickers in grocery stores. In March, the group published its first photo book on Miami’s ventanitas featuring poems from residents of all ages.
Cummings joined O, Miami in 2013 as the organization’s first full-time employee. She worked as the Senior Director of Operations and Technology before serving as interim director since May. Cabrera, a writer and instructor, was first introduced to O, Miami in 2012 when she read her poetry at one of the group’s events. After volunteering with the organization, she was hired as the group’s education coordinator in 2020 and has served of Director of Education since 2022.
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The O, Miami board of directors unanimously approved Cummings and Cabrera as co-directors in June after a monthslong national search, the organization said. The two officially began their roles July 1.
“We’re really excited to be leading this organization shoulder to shoulder and to have this forward-looking, collaborative co-directors model,” Cabrera said. “Coming from inside this organization, we know what it takes to make the organization run well, and we’re excited to put together our shared institutional knowledge and work as a dynamic duo.”
Cabrera and Cummings said their main goals for the organization include rejuvenating the group’s educational initiatives in and outside of school classrooms and expanding its publishing division. The co-directors plan to lean in on programming throughout the year and then celebrating the group’s work during the April festival.
They want to make sure O, Miami addresses the needs of the city and a broader audience, Cummings said. That includes creating job opportunities and providing resources for local creatives, poets, teachers and teaching artists amid South Florida’s affordability crisis.
“We really are proud to have O, Miami serve as a resource for creatives, young creatives and people looking for not just validation, but for ways to make this part of their career choice,” Cummings said.
This fall, O, Miami will launch its first audio book and publish first children’s book in time for the Miami Book Fair in November. Next spring, the group will celebrate the 10th anniversary of Zip Odes, an annual open call for Miamians to submit five-line poems in the form of their Zip Codes. O, Miami is working with 100 South Florida photographers to release a 10-year Zip Ode retrospective book.
“This work has been such a passion project,” Cummings said. “To be able to steward [O, Miami] into its next chapter, it just feels like it was written all along.”
This story was produced , in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.
