May 16, 2017
When a Mystery Illness Strikes
This is what I have learned from the past months of pain: We are made of equal parts death and life.
Leslie Contreras Schwartz
Instructor & Writer
Leslie Contreras Schwartz is a multi-genre writer, a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, and the 2019-2021 Houston Poet Laureate. She is the winner of the 2022 C&R Press Nonfiction Prize for From the Womb of Sky and Earth, a lyrical memoir (Fall, 2023). She is also the author of five collections of poetry, including The Body Cosmos (Mouthfeel Press, 2024). Her work has appeared in AGNI, Missouri Review, Iowa Review, Pleiades, and more. Recent work has been featured with the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day. Contreras Schwartz is currently a poetry and nonfiction faculty member at Alma College's MFA low-residency program in creative writing. Photo credit: Candance Sherman
She lives in Houston with her husband and three children.
