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Bobby and Lee Byrd, photo by Debbie Nathan

Mr. Byrd grew up in Memphis during the golden age of the city’s music scene. “That music,” he says, “probably saved my life.” Byrd has published ten books of poems, his most recent being Otherwise My Life is Ordinary. He has received an NEA Fellowship for Poetry and the D.H. Lawrence Fellowship, an International Fellowship in Mexico funded jointly by the NEA and Belles Artes de México.

Novelist and publisher Lee Merrill Byrd was born and raised in New Jersey but has spent most of her life in the Southwest. Lee has published a collection of short stories, My Sister Disappears (SMU Press), three children’s books, The Treasure on Gold Street, Juanito Counts to Ten and Birdie’s Beauty Parlor (Cinco Puntos) and a novel Riley’s Fire (Algonquin). In 1997, she was the recipient of the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship.

Byrd and his wife, Lee, moved in 1978 to El Paso. In 1985 they founded Cinco Puntos Press, a very independent publishing company rooted in the US/Mexican border and recognized for its bilingual and multicultural books for children, young adults and adults. cincopuntos.com In 2005, Bobby and Lee received Cultural Freedom Fellowships from the Lannan Foundation.

Interview with Publishers Weekly, August 26, 2021: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/87224-the-byrds-of-cinco-puntos-press-say-goodbye.html

Interview on KTEP (NPR El Paso), July 5, 2021: https://www.ktep.org/post/cinco-puntos-press-founders-reflect-legacy-decision-sell-0

Interview with Lone Star Literary Life, 2018: https://www.lonestarliterary.com/node/1216

Disclaimer:
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Southwest Word Fiesta™ or its steering committee.

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We respectfully acknowledge that the entirety of southwestern New Mexico is the traditional territory, since time immemorial, of the Chis-Nde, also known as the people of the Chiricahua Apache Nation. The Chiricahua Apache Nation is recognized as a sovereign Native Nation by the United States in the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Friendship of 1 July 1852 (10 Stat. 979) (Treaty of Santa Fe ratified 23 March 1853 and proclaimed by President Franklin Pierce 25 March 1853).

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Mimbres Press of Western New Mexico University is a traditional academic press that welcomes agented and unagented submissions in the following genres: literary fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, memoir, poetry, children’s books, historical fiction, and academic books. We are particularly interested in academic work and commercial work with a strong social message, including but not limited to works of history, reportage, biography, anthropology, culture, human rights, and the natural world. We will also consider selective works of national and global significance.