“As a life-long practice for me, writing will always have crests and valleys, especially if you are looking to grow your craft, expand your capability for language, and embark on new challenges with every project.” —Reyes Ramirez
Reyes Ramirez (he/him) is a Houstonian, writer, educator, curator, and organizer of Mexican and Salvadoran descent. He authored the short story collection The Book of Wanderers (2022), a 2023 Young Lions Fiction Award Finalist, from University of Arizona Press’ Camino del Sol series and the poetry collection El Rey of Gold Teeth (2023) from Hub City Press, a finalist for the 2024 Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best First Book of Poetry. His latest curatorial project, The Houston Artist Speaks Through Grids, explores the use of grids in contemporary Houston art, literature, history, and politics. Reyes has been honored as a 2020 CantoMundo Fellow, 2021 Interchange Artist Grant Fellow, 2022 Crosstown Arts Writer in Residence, 2023 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow, 2023 Dobie Paisano Fellow, 2024 Speculative Play and Just Futurities Fellow and awarded grants from the Houston Arts Alliance, Poets & Writers, and The Warhol Foundation’s Idea Fund.
On Saturday, November 9th, Reyes is teaching a class for the WLT called “Money (& Time & Space) on My Mind: Applying to Residencies, Fellowships, and Grants.” This class will give writers a foundation for finding and securing opportunities to support their writing projects.
Here’s what Reyes had to share with us:
Scribe: Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you write? How did you come to writing?
Reyes Ramirez: I’m a writer, educator, curator, and organizer of Mexican and Salvadoran descent from Houston, TX. I write everything! Poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, criticism, grants, articles, and more. I’ve even just recently finished writing a book of Houston craft beer poetry reviews that was grant funded! I came to writing as a young man who, throughout his life, had to navigate and jump between languages as pathways for joy, violence, grief, processing, and community building. Though I started writing in high school, it wasn’t until college that I took the ability to create my own realities and languages through words seriously.
Scribe: In your own work, how do you approach overcoming the challenges that come with writing, be it writer’s block or craft or business-related challenges?
RR: Look to other creatives! Look to the painters, the filmmakers, the dancers, the photographers, the singers, the collage artists, the violinists, the archivists, the actors, the sculptors, the chefs, the curators, etc. You may feel glad to know that many others are asking the same questions as you but exploring them in different ways, whether it be through visual, physical, or sonic languages. Look at them and see if you can adapt or be inspired by their conversations for your craft (or even collaborate.)
Scribe: Has there been a moment of epiphany in terms of your work, when you thought, “This is it! Now I know what I’m doing!” How long did that feeling last?
RR: I think the practice of writing is like one of those circle diagrams that go:
begin work -> struggle to put it into language -> sit with it -> epiphany! -> implement epiphany -> begin work…
I felt this in every book I’ve completed, within stories, poems, essays, etc. As a life-long practice for me, writing will always have crests and valleys, especially if you are looking to grow your craft, expand your capability for language, and embark on new challenges with every project. That is the blessing and curse of being a writer, to me, those fluctuations of epiphany and struggle.
Scribe: What piece of advice do you find yourself giving to writers again and again?
RR: Be patient with your process! Live your life. Build community. Learn to love your craft. Opportunities come and go, but your practice, the one you’ve made, is what will be there at the end of the day, the year, the decade. The best you can do for it is to hone your process and respect it.
Scribe: What is one thing that people will take away from this class?
RR: There are opportunities that will grow you and your practice immeasurably, and there are opportunities that will never be right for you. One thing people will take away from this class is how to best select opportunities that are right for you and how to begin pursuing them with the right foot forward.
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Thanks, Reyes!
Click here to learn more about Reyes’ upcoming class.
