Lupe Mendez

Originally from Galveston, Texas, Lupe Mendez (writer/educator/activist) is the author of Why I Am Like Tequila (Willow Books, 2019), winner of the 2019 John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters. Mendez is one of the founders of the Librotraficante Movement and of Tintero Projects, a Texas-based organization that works with emerging Latinx writers and other writers of color within the Gulf Coast Region, with Houston as its hub.

Mendez earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Texas at El Paso. His work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast Journal, the Texas Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Split This Rock, Poetry magazine, and Poem-a-Day from the Academy of American Poets, among others. He has received fellowships from CantoMundo, Macondo, and the Crescendo Literary/Poetry Foundation poetry incubator. 

Mendez is the 2022–2023 Texas poet laureate. He lives in Houston, where he has worked as an educator for the last 22 years.