Born in New Orleans, raised in Houston, & now living in Manhattan, Irene Vázquez is a queer Black Mexican American poet, translator, and journalist who writes at the intersection of Black cultural work, placemaking and the environment. Irene's debut chapbook Take Me To the Water was released by Bloof Books in October 2022. Their poetry also appears in When Language Broke Open: Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent, out from University of Arizona Press in December 2023. Irene is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominated poet. 
   Irene's first work of French-to-English translation, Aiko and the Planet of Dogs, will be published by Levine Querido in Spring 2025. Irene is also working on a translation of Jessica Oublié's graphic memoir on the French Caribbean chlordecone crisis, Toxic Tropics, for Street Noise Books.  
   Irene completed a B.A. summa cum laude in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and English at Yale. In 2021, with the support of the Pulitzer Center, Irene reported on environmental justice advocacy and healing in Black and Indigenous communities on the Louisiana coast. 
   By day, Irene works as an associate editor and publicist at Levine Querido, where they edited the USA Today bestseller, The Free People's Village. When not in the world of books, Irene likes drinking coffee, watching the WNBA, and reminding folks that the South has something to say. 

Selected Awards and Commendations

• Pushcart Prize nominee, Hennepin Review, 2022
• Best of the Net nominee, Muzzle Magazine, 2022
• Brooklyn Poets Fellow, Spring 2022
• Yale English Department, John Hubbard Curtis Prize, 2021
• Yale English Department, Henry Strong Prize in American Literature, 2021
• Yale Daily News Magazine's Wallace Prize, 2nd place, 2021 
• ​National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Scholarship Winner, 2020​

Photo: Gerardo Velasquez