Laura Villareal

Laura Villareal is a poet and book critic. Her 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 at Bucknell University, National Book Critics Circle’s Emerging Critics Program, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Dobie Paisano Fellowship Program at University of Texas-Austin, and CantoMundo. Her writing related to the environment, climate crisis, and biodiversity loss has been supported by residencies at Oak Spring Garden Foundation and a short-term research fellowship at The Huntington.