The fourth Houston Poet Laureate, serving from 2019 to 2021, Leslie Contreras Schwartz is a Jewish writer born in Houston with Mexican American roots reaching back several generations in Texas. She earned a bachelor's degree at Rice University and graduated from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her collections include Fuego (Saint Julian Press, 2016), Nightbloom & Cenote (Saint Julian Press, 2018), and Black Dove / Paloma Negra (FlowerSong Press, 2020), a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters award for best book of poetry. Her lyrical memoir From the Womb of Sky and Earth won the 2022 C&R Press Nonfiction Prize. She received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship in 2021.
