Kimberly Reyes is a poet, essayist, journalist, and pop and visual culture scholar. A first-generation college student, she holds an MA in Arts Journalism from Columbia University, a Fulbright-sponsored MA in Irish Literature and Film from University College Cork, an MFA in Poetry from San Francisco State University, and a PhD in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Before transitioning to creative writing, she worked as a music and entertainment reporter, news producer, advertising copywriter, and Silicon Valley tech writer.
Her work has been supported by fellowships, grants, residencies, and scholarships from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, the Arts Council of Ireland, and Culture Ireland. She has also received funding to attend workshops including Tin House, Callaloo, Sewanee Writers' Conference, Summer Literary Seminars in Kenya, and the Prague Summer Program for Writers.
Her most recent poetry collection, Bloodletting (Omnidawn, 2025), was longlisted for the Maya Angelou Book Award. It follows vanishing point. (Omnidawn, 2023), which includes the International Poetry Film Festival Award–winning poem “We Are All Drowned Out” and was named one of California Review of Books’ 31 Outstanding Poetry Books of 2023. Her earlier books include Running to Stand Still (Omnidawn, 2019), a finalist for the Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, and Warning Coloration (dancing girl press, 2018), a finalist for the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Competition. Her debut essay collection, Life During Wartime (Fourteen Hills, 2019), won the Michael Rubin Prose Chapbook Award.
Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly, Time, The Village Voice, ESPN The Magazine, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, The Best American Poetry, poets.org, RTÉ Radio, The Irish Examiner, and Film Ireland, among many other venues. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, and her work has been anthologized across genres. Her work as a film critic earned her Motion Picture Association accreditation in 2022.
Reyes has taught poetry and creative writing in correctional institutions, including San Quentin and Stateville Correctional Center, and has held teaching positions at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco, and Ó Bhéal and the Munster Literature Centre in Ireland.
She is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Miami, where she teaches in the undergraduate and MFA programs, with a focus on poetry, film, Gothic studies, science fiction, and creative nonfiction.
A second-generation New Yorker and Black Nuyorican, Kimberly lives in Miami Beach, where she navigates international politics, climate change, hurricanes (go Canes!), and the Atlantic Ocean—while keeping her unmistakably Gen X, coastal sensibility intact.