URBAN-15’s Mega Corazon Poetry Marathon premieres at urban15.org/live-stream on Thursday, April 16 at 7pm CST. The 2026 marathon will feature 19 poets, each reading six poems in celebration of the United States’ 250th anniversary and in observance of the First Amendment of the Constitution. The winner of the Mega Corazón Poetry Marathon will be determined by an online voting process at urban15.org. The poet with the most votes received will be awarded the $500 “Gregg Barrios Precious Words Prize.” Previous winners of this award include Amalia Ortiz, Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, and Jessica Tilton.

The Mega Corazón Poetry Marathon was conceptualized in 2014 by URBAN-15 in collaboration with Inaugural San Antonio Poet Laureate Carmen Tafolla during a production of Tafolla’s “San Antonio, Mi Pueblo.” The participating poets of that production became the backbone of the now yearly Mega Corazón. This online tour-de-force highlights the works of some of Texas’ best performance poets, ranging from local legends such as Anthony “The Poet” and Jessica Tilton, all the way to state-wide recognized voices from the likes of Octavio Quintanilla and Eddie Vega.
Mega Corazón will be formatted as a playlist of individual poems in an extended 24-hour loop, featuring 19 poets and over 100 poems. URBAN-15 anticipates a global viewership of over 2,000 individuals around the globe, helping to propel Mega Corazón’s mission to provide free and easy access to local poetic voices for poetry lovers worldwide.

The 2026 Mega Corazón Poets Are:
Amalia Ortiz, Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, Anthony “The Poet” Flores, Carmen Tafolla, Don Mathis, Eddie Vega, Eduardo Garza, Frances Treviño Santos, Jennifer Yañez-Alaniz, Jessica Tilton “Tiltonica”, Jim LaVilla-Havelin, John Phillip Santos, Johnny Rivers “Space Dragon”, Marisol Cortez, Naomi Shihab Nye, Natalia Treviño, Octavio Quintanilla, Rohn Bayes, Tomas Roque