About Me

Reyes Ramirez (he/him) is a Houstonian, writer, educator, curator, and organizer of Mexican and Salvadoran descent. He authored the short story collection The Book of Wanderers (2022), a 2023 Young Lions Fiction Award Finalist, from University of Arizona Press’ Camino del Sol series and the poetry collection El Rey of Gold Teeth (2023) from Hub City Press, a finalist for the 2024 Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best First Book of Poetry. His latest curatorial project, The Houston Artist Speaks Through Grids, explores the use of grids in contemporary Houston art, literature, history, and politics. Reyes has been honored as a 2020 CantoMundo Fellow, 2021 Interchange Artist Grant Fellow, 2022 Crosstown Arts Writer in Residence, 2023 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow, 2023 Dobie Paisano Fellow, 2024 Speculative Play and Just Futurities Fellow and awarded grants from the Houston Arts Alliance, Poets & Writers, and The Warhol Foundation’s Idea Fund.

Reyes won the 2019 YES Contemporary Art Writer’s Grant, 2017 Blue Mesa Review Nonfiction Contest, 2014 riverSedge Poetry Prize and has poems, stories, essays, and reviews in: Indiana Review, Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology, Infrarrealista Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, december magazine, Arteinformado, Texas Review, Houston Noir, Gulf Coast Journal, The Acentos Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere.

Reyes has also been a finalist for several honors, contests & prizes, including: 2023 New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award; 2023-2025 & 2021-2023 Houston Poet Laureate; Hub City Press’ 2021 New Southern Voices Poetry Book Prize; 2021 Jesse H. Jones Dobie Paisano Fellowship; Florida Review’s 2021 Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Award; Cosmonauts Avenue's 2018 fiction prize; december magazine's 2018 poetry prize; Indiana Review’s 2019 Creative Nonfiction Contest; Texas Review Press’, Iron Horse Literary Review's and Gold Line Press' poetry chapbook competitions; Orison Books’ 2019 Prize in Fiction; and PANK’s Fiction Book Contest. His other distinctions include: an Honorable Mention for Gulf Coast Journal’s 2022 Poetry Prize, Texas Observer’s 2019 Short Story Contest; Santa Fe Writer’s Project’s 2019 Book Award Long List; and Semifinalist for the 2021 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, Tupelo Press’ 2021 Berkshire Prize, Wisconsin Poetry Series' 2021 Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes, YesYes Books’ 2019 Fiction Open Reading Period and the 2020 OSU Press/The Journal Wheeler Prize for Poetry.

Reyes is represented by Aemilia Philips (Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency).