Laura Villareal, Poet & Book Critic
In residence, May 21-June 10, 2025
About the Artist
Poet & Book Critic Laura Villareal joins us as May’s Creative Resident. Laura’s debut poetry collection, Girl’s Guide to Leaving (University of Wisconsin Press 2022), was awarded Texas Institute of Letters’ John A. Robert Johnson Award for a First Book of Poetry and the Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Poetry. She earned an MFA at Rutgers University—Newark and has been the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts, National Book Critics Circle’s Emerging Critics Program, VONA, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Dobie Paisano Fellowship Program at University of Texas-Austin.
She is currently an associate with Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, where she co-edits and writes for Letras Latinas Blog 2, in addition to working on other related projects. She is also a contributing editor at West Branch Magazine. Alongside Diannely Antigua, she is co-editing a new anthology of Latinx poetry titled We Come from Everything: Poetry for the 21st Century forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2027.
You can learn more about Laura and her book and poems by visiting her website. Meet Laura by signing up for her Foraging for Imagery: Generative Poetry Workshop and Walk on June 6th, at the Reserve.
