Cynthia Guardado /sIHn-thee-uh Gwarr-Dah-Doe/ (she/her/hers) is a Salvadoran-American poet and a tenured Professor of English at Fullerton College.

Her parents, Anselmo & Margoth, immigrated from El Salvador to Los Angeles, California, in the early 1980’s. She earned her Bachelors from the University of California, Santa Cruz.  She received her Masters of Fine Arts from California State University, Fresno with an emphasis in poetry, Guardado is the Editor-in-Chief of LiveWire an online literary magazine at Fullerton College, was the Event Producer for Lambda Literary’s 2020 LitFest, and is a social justice activist in the community. 

She is the author of two collections of poetry, Cenizas from Camino del Sol series at The University of Arizona Press (2022) and ENDEAVOR from World Stage Press (2017). Her poems have also appeared in Poetry Magazine, ITWOW: In the Words of Women International Anthology, Huizache, Bozalta Journal, The Acentos Review, The Packinghouse Review, The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States, and The Normal School. Guardado also translated and transcribed interviews with journalist and Cuban exile, Normando Hernandez Gonzalez which were published in The Madrid Conversations (New Orleans Press 2013). She was also the winner of Concurso Binacional De Poesía Pellicer-Frost 2017 (México). Her manuscript Cenizas was a finalist for the National Poetry Series (2019)