Laura Villareal is a poet and book critic. Her debut poetry collection, Girl’s Guide to Leaving, (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022) was awarded Texas Institute of Letters’ John A. Robert Johnson Award for a First Book of Poetry and the Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Poetry. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts, National Book Critics Circle’s Emerging Critics Program, and the Dobie Paisano Fellowship Program at University of Texas-Austin. She is currently an associate with Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, where she co-edits and writes for Letras Latinas Blog 2, in addition to working on other related projects.