About Leslie Contreras Schwartz
Leslie Contreras Schwartz is an American poet who was the fourth Houston Poet Laureate (2019–2021) and a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Contreras Schwartz was born in Houston, Texas, with Mexican American and Mexican roots going back several generations in Houston and Texas. She is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Body Cosmos (Mouthfeel Press, 2023); Black Dove / Paloma Negra (FlowerSong Press, 2020), a finalist for 2020 Best Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters; Fuego (St. Julian Press, 2016); and Nightbloom & Cenote (SJP, 2018), a semi-finalist for the 2017 Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, judged by Ilya Kaminsky.Her work, including essays and short stories, has appeared in Pleiades, The Missouri Review, [PANK], Iowa Review, Verse Daily, Catapult, and Xicanx: 21 Mexican American Writers of the 21st Century (University of Arizona, 2022), edited by ire’ne lara silva, among others. She has collaborated or been commissioned for poetic projects with the City of Houston, the Houston Grand Opera, and The Moody Center of the Arts at Rice University.
She has taught at University of Houston and Rice University, teaches community workshops, and is a speaker on the topics of mental health and poetry.
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