One of Laurie Ann Guerrero’s favorite places to write is a small café in the South San Antonio neighborhood where she grew up.
“This is my safe space,” Guerrero said from Sip & Sit with Me Coffee House, about 10 minutes from the A&M–San Antonio campus and across the road from Mission San José. “My mom lives down the street, and I like to walk to the mission. This is where I feel creative.”
That creativity has helped fuel Guerrero, associate professor of English and writer-in-residence at A&M–San Antonio. She is about to publish her fifth book, REDBOOK, in October. The book was recently awarded the 2025 Autumn House Poetry Prize. Founded in 1998, Autumn House Press is a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based nonprofit publisher that specializes in poetry and other fine literature.
REDBOOK is a collection of lyric essays, poems, and images of embroidered textile art she created using red thread on cotton muslin fabric — the inspiration for the title.
Guerrero began creating embroidered art in 2016 during what she describes as a particularly difficult period in her life.
“I had recently lost my grandfather, who raised me,” she said. “I was going through a divorce. My oldest child had just graduated from high school and moved to New York to go to college. There was a lot happening all at once.”
During this difficult time, Guerrero said she felt powerless and isolated. Embroidery became a return to something steady and familiar.
“I was unable to write,” she said. “But doing the embroidery got my words moving again. It helped me write the poems and essays I needed to write.”
As she worked, Guerrero also researched how women in cultures around the world — including China, Mexico, and France — used embroidery as a form of expression and empowerment in societies that often limited their voices.
“It wasn’t just the embroidery itself; it was what was happening while women were creating it,” Guerrero said. “They found healing and strength in community. The art became an act of survival. It was revolutionary and transformational.”
In addition to REDBOOK, Guerrero is working on a new novel, “The Ten Suicides of Celeste Navarro,” which tells the fictional story of a 189-year-old family matriarch who is also the daughter of two survivors of the 1836 Battle of the Alamo. The book draws on research Guerrero conducted as a college student on Juana Navarro Alsbury, an actual Alamo survivor.
“The book is a mix of historical fiction and magical realism,” said Guerrero. “Magical realism is a genre in which there is a realistic, normal world, but supernatural and magical things happen as if they too are normal.”
In the novel, Celeste Navarro longs to leave the natural world but finds that, despite repeated attempts, she cannot. She lives with her 5X great-granddaughter, a university professor who also serves as her caretaker. As the story unfolds, Navarro shares stories about generations of Tejana women and their experiences across Texas history. Guerrero hopes to finalize the manuscript this year.
Guerrero is also the author of “I Have Eaten the Rattlesnake: New & Selected Poems,” “A Crown for Gumecindo,” “A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying,” and “Babies Under the Skin.” Before joining A&M–San Antonio in 2017, she served as San Antonio Poet Laureate (2014–16) and Texas State Poet Laureate (2016–17).
As writer-in-residence, Guerrero brings acclaimed authors to campus through the University’s Visiting Writer Series, which features public readings and student workshops. She teaches poetry, creative writing, and graduate courses in cultural studies, women and gender studies, and Mexican American studies.
“My goal as an educator is to help students find their voices, tell their stories, and learn how to make space for themselves and their histories,” Guerrero said.