Richard Vargas reads his poem “morning coffee at Café Crema” from Shō No. 4 (Winter 2024).
Richard Vargas earned his B.A. at Cal State University, Long Beach, where he studied under Gerald Locklin and Richard Lee. He edited/published five issues of The Tequila Review, 1978-1980, and twelve issues of The Mas Tequila Review from 2010-2015. Vargas received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico, 2010, where he workshopped his poems with Joy Harjo. He was recipient of the 2011 Taos Summer Writers’ Conference Hispanic Writer Award. He was on the faculties of the 2012 10th National Latino Writers Conference and the 2015 Taos Summer Writers’ Conference. Published collections: McLife, 2005; American Jesus, 2007; Guernica, revisited, 2014; How A Civilization Begins, 2022, and a fifth book, leaving a tip at the Blue Moon Motel, published by Casa Urraca Press in 2023. He currently is host of a monthly poetry open mic in Madison (Poetry on Tap, Minocqua Brewing Company, “drink beer and don’t be racist.”) and is a reader of poetry submissions for a Midwest literary journal, Of Rust And Glass. He resides in Wisconsin, near the lake where Otis Redding’s plane crashed.