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