Kimberly Reyes is a poet and essayist whose work examines how history becomes culture, culture becomes memory, and both become personal. Moving between autobiography and documentary material, she draws freely from archives, journalism, film, music, and popular culture to write about race, gender, place, power, and the body.
She is the author of five books spanning poetry and nonfiction. Her most recent collection, Bloodletting (Omnidawn, 2025), was longlisted for the Maya Angelou Book Award and was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Awards. Her previous books include Running to Stand Still (Omnidawn, 2019), a finalist for the Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award; vanishing point. (Omnidawn, 2023), which features the International Poetry Film Festival Award-winning poem “We Are All Drowned Out”; Warning Coloration (dancing girl press, 2018), a finalist for the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Competition; and the essay collection Life During Wartime (Fourteen Hills, 2019), winner of the Michael Rubin Book Award.
Her work has appeared widely, including in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly, Time.com, The Village Voice, ESPN The Magazine, RTÉ Radio, The Irish Examiner, Film Ireland, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, and Poetry Ireland Review, and has been published by the Academy of American Poets in American Poets, Poem-a-Day, and Poets.org. Her writing has been supported by the Poetry Foundation, the Fulbright Program, Tin House, CantoMundo, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, the Arts Council of Ireland, and many other organizations.
Before turning to creative writing full time, Reyes worked as a music and entertainment reporter, radio producer, advertising copywriter, and Silicon Valley technology writer. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Miami, where she teaches poetry in the undergraduate and MFA programs.