R. Flowers Rivera

R. Flowers Rivera is native of Mississippi, she completed a Ph.D. at Binghamton University and an M.A. at Hollins University in addition to an M.S. from Georgia State University and a B.S. from The University of Georgia. Xavier Review Press published her debut poetry collection, Troubling Accents (July 2013), which received a nomination in poetry for Troubling Accents from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters and was selected by the Texas Association of Authors as its 2014 Poetry Book of the Year. Rivera's second collection, Heathen, has been selected by poet and literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller as the winner of the 2015 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize (Lotus Press, March 2015, with distribution by Wayne State University Press); Heathen also won the 2016 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Poetry. Her short story, "The Iron Bars," won the 1999 Peregrine Prize, and she has been a finalist for the May Swenson Award, the Journal Intro Award, the Gary Snyder Memorial Award, the Paumanok Award, the Crab Orchard Series, and the Gival Poetry Prize as well as garnering nominations for Pushcarts. Currently, she lives in McKinney, Texas, and teaches at the University of Texas at Dallas. View more of her work by visiting http://www.promethea.com. Follow her on Twitter @RFlowersRivera and Instagram MISSISSIPPIAN.