About Manuel Iris
Manuel Iris (1983) is a Mexico-born American poet whose work has received national and international recognition. He served as Poet Laureate of Cincinnati, Ohio, and as Writer-in-Residence at both the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library and Thomas More University. In 2021, he was named a member of Mexico’s National System of Art Creators, one of the country’s highest honors for artists.Author of six poetry collections, Iris has been awarded the Mérida National Poetry Prize (2009) for Cuaderno de los sueños and the Rodulfo Figueroa Regional Poetry Prize (2014) for Los disfraces del fuego, a book that was also a finalist for Ecuador’s International Poetry Prize Ciudad de la Lira. His bilingual anthology Translating Silence/Traducir el silencio (New York, 2018) received two recognitions at the International Latino Book Awards in Los Angeles, and his later collection The Parting Present/Lo que se irá earned the Reader’s Choice Award at the Ohioana Book Awards (2022). In 2023, his personal anthology Descifrar lo invisible/Rozszyfrowa? niewidzialne was published in Spain and Poland, translated into Polish by Marta Eloy Cichocka. That same year, the Autonomous University of Chiapas (Mexico) released Traductor del silencio: Critical Approaches to the Work of Manuel Iris, a collective volume of essays, reviews, and interviews by 23 authors.
In 2025, Iris received the Ambroggio Prize from the Academy of American Poets for his book The Whole Earth is a Garden of Monsters/Toda la tierra es un jardín de monstruos. Manuel Iris has given readings, lectures, and talks across Mexico, the United States, and Europe. He currently resides and writes in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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