IRE'NE LARA SILVA, the 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections: furia, Blood Sugar Canto, Cuicacalli/House of Song, FirstPoems and the eaters of flowers. She has also written two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos, a comic book and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán. She is the recipient of the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction, a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO's 2013 Gift of Freedom Award.