Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003), Poeta en San Francisco (TinFish Press, 2005), Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010), To Love as Aswang (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2015), Invocation to Daughters (City Lights Publishing, 2017), Letters to a Young Brown Girl (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2020), and Wanna Peek Into My Notebook?: Notes on Pinay Liminality (Paloma Press, 2022).
She is also the author of three chapbooks, For the City That Nearly Broke Me (Aztlan Libre Press, 2012), Cherry (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2007), and Easter Sunday (Ypolita Press, 2007).
Poems and essays have appeared in Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, Hambone, Huizache, Maganda, Marías at Sampaguitas, Meridians, Ms. Magazine, New American Writing, New England Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, San Francisco Chronicle, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, The New York Times, World Literature Today, and elsewhere.
An Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow, a recipient of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, the Global Filipino Literary Award, and a San Francisco Press Club Journalism Award, she received her BA in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, her MFA at San Francisco State University, and she teaches in the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program at University of San Francisco. She has taught in the MFA programs at Mills College and University of San Francisco. She lives with her husband, poet and educator Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland.