Diwata

James Laughlin Award-winning Filipina poet Barbara J. Reyes invents new mythologies melding Southeast Asian traditions with streetwise West Coast poetry.


About the Author
Barbara Jane Reyes: Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley, and her MFA at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, 2005), for which she received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets.

Reyes is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including 2nd Avenue Poetry, Asian Pacific American Journal, Boxcar Poetry Review, Chain, Crate, Interlope, New American Writing, Nocturnes Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Parthenon West Review, Shampoo Poetry, Tinfish, Versal, as well as in the anthologies Babaylan (Aunt Lute, 2000), Eros Pinoy (Anvil, 2001), InvAsian: Asian Sisters Represent (Study Center Press, 2003), Going Home to a Landscape (Calyx, 2003), Coloring Book (Rattlecat, 2003), Not Home But Here (Anvil, 2003), Pinoy Poetics (Meritage, 2004), Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area (Avalon Publishing, 2004), 100 Love Poems: Philippine Love Poetry Since 1905 (University of the Philippines Press, 2004), The Lambda Award finalist Red Light: Superheroes, Saints and Sluts (Arsenal Pulp, 2005), Graphic Poetry (Victionary, 2005), The First Hay(na)ku Anthology (Meritage, 2005). She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Mills College, and she lives with her husband, the poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland, CA. Her website is: http: //barbarajanereyes.com