Irene Vázquez is a poet, editor, and journalist from Houston, Texas. Irene completed her 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. Her debut chapbook, Take Me to the Water, is forthcoming from Bloof Books in October 2022. 
   Irene writes at the intersection of the environment, Black cultural work, and placemaking. She was part of the 2021 cohort of Mellon Mays-Bouchet Fellows at Yale; her project seeks to understand how French Caribbean poetics can provide a model for thinking beyond sovereignty. 
   Irene is a Pushcart Prize nominated writer and a 2017 Davidson Fellow in Literature for her project "Ebb and Flow: Translating Lives in Transition."  
​   When she's not writing, she likes drinking coffee, watching Queen Sugar and reminding folks that the South has something to say. 

Selected Awards and Commendations

• 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
• We Need Diverse Books Internship Grantee, 2020
• Edward A. Bouchet Fellow, 2021 cohort 
• Davidson Fellow (Literature), 2017
  • The Davidson Fellows Scholarship recognizes young people under the age of 18 who have completed an original, significant piece of work with the potential to make a positive contribution to society
• ​Nominated for Pushcart Prize, 2015
  • Nominated by Gravel Magazine 

Photo: Gerardo Velasquez