About Lupe Mendez

Originally from Galveston, TX, Lupe Mendez is a Writer, Editor, Educator, Organizer, and Activist. He is the author several books poetry and multi-genre works, including WHY I AM LIKE TEQUILA (Willow Books, 2019), winner of the 2019 John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry, PRAYER HOLDING NIGHT: NEW & SELECTED WORKS (Texas Christian University Press, Forthcoming, July 2025) and WE EXIST IN THE WHISPER: HUELGA SCHOOL WORKS (Arte Publico Press, Forthcoming, September 2025). He is the founder of Tintero Projects which works with emerging Latinx writers and other writers of color within the Texas Gulf Coast Region, with Houston as its hub. Lupe earned his Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Texas @ El Paso and currently serves as Poetry Editor for the Texas Observer and Associate Editor for the Acentos Review. He has been awarded residencies and fellowships from CantoMundo, Macondo, the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures, the Poetry Foundation + Crescendo Literary Poetry Incubator, the Betsy Hotel Writer’s Room and was one of twenty-five recipients of the inaugural Houston BIPOC Arts Network Fund (Houston BANF) Artist Award for 2023. . Lupe is a 20+ year veteran in education having served classrooms across K through College in public, private and charter school settings. Mendez is Texas Poet Laureate Emeritus (Texas Poet Laureate 2022 - 2023).

Mendez has close to 20 years of experience as a performance poet - having opened up for notable writers as Dagoberto Gilb, Esmeralda Santiago, U.S. Poet Laureates, Juan Felipe Herrera and Ada Limon and legendary writers such as the late Raul Salinas. He has shared his poetry across the country in places like the Holocaust Museum Houston, the Jung Center, MECA (Houston,TX), the Mission Cultural Center For Latino Arts (San Francisco,CA), the National Hispanic Cultural Center (Albuquerque,NM)  the Mexican American Cultural Center (Austin,TX), and Columbia University, (New York, NY). Mendez has served as a keynote speaker/poetry performer all across Texas. He has hosted writing workshop opportunities across the country, most recently as a teaching artist for the Poetry Foundation (Chicago, IL) as it hosts its Teacher Poetry Summits in MIami, FL and Chicago, IL. 

Mendez’s work can been seen in print and online formats including  Huizache, the Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast Journal, the Texas Review, the L.A. Review of Books, Split This Rock, Poetry Magazine, The Best American Poetry 2021 and Poem-A-Day from the Academy of American Poets. Lupe is an internationally published writer with prose work in Latino Rebels, Houston Free Press, Aster(ix) Journal, , Norton's -Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories From The United States and Latin America, and Flash (University of Chester, England)- the international forum for flash fiction, as well as poetry that appears in The Bayou Review (University of Houston-Downtown), Luna Luna Magazine, Pilgrimage, Green Mountains Review, among others. 

In April of 2020, Mendez along with 7 other Texas artists was selected to represent the state as Texas Official Artists - Lupe served as the 2022 Texas Poet Laureate, being only one of two poets from Galveston, TX and the first person of color from Galveston to have ever been appointed to this position . The title of Texas Poet Laureate is the state’s highest accolade for excellence in the arts.

Lupe's work reflects his roots in Texas ( including Galveston Island, Houston, and the Rio Grande Valley) and the Mexican state of Jalisco (specifically, Atotonilco El Alto, San Jose del Valle, San Juan de los Lagos, Guadalajara, Los Cuates, La Pareja). Mendez is the son of an undocumented Mexicano (who later became documented and a Southern Tejana and his work remarks on issues from the political to the emotional in a way that intends to connect with both the novice reader to the pro poetic writer. 

Meanwhile . . .

Happily married to Jasminne Mendez and raising his daughter, Lupe works as an educator in Houston, TX., having received his Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the ON-LINE MFA IN CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM at the Univ. of Texas @ El Paso .  Click on the bold words to get more info on the program.  - Click on Jasminne's name to go to her site.