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. Their poetry also appears in When Language Broke Open: Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent (University of Arizona Press 2023) and Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press 2025). 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 (Levine Querido 2024) won the Prix Albertine Jeunesse. Their translation of Jessica Oublié's graphic memoir on the French Caribbean chlordecone crisis, Toxic Tropics: A Horror Story of Environmental Injustice was published by Street Noise Books in 2025.  
   Irene completed a B.A. 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 editor at Levine Querido, where they edited the New York Times bestseller, One of the Boys. 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

• Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree, 2025
• 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: Rachel Kenaston