Paola Capó-García is a poet and educator from San Juan, Puerto Rico. She currently designs professional development opportunities for educators and mentors early-career teachers. Before this she taught at UC San Diego and UC Davis, where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English, respectively. She graduated from Syracuse University with a BS in Magazine Journalism and English & Textual Studies.

Capó-García is the author of CLAP FOR ME THAT’S NOT ME (2018), selected by D.A. Powell as the winner of Rescue Press' 2017 Black Box Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Volta, The Texas Review, Puerto Rico en mi corazón, Latino Book Review, jubilat, Poetry Society of America, Academy of American Poets, and others. In 2020 she served as a mentor for Latinx in Publishing's inaugural Writers Mentorship Program, and in 2021 she was awarded Teachers & Writers Magazine’s Bechtel Prize for an article detailing her experience teaching creative writing virtually during the pandemic. As a journalist her work has appeared in BOMB, Variety, Remezcla, and ELLE, among others.  

She currently resides in San Diego, where she will serve as the City's Poet Laureate until 2027.