Richard Vargas was born in Compton, CA. He 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, publishing early works by Jimmy Santiago Baca, Alberto Rios, Nila Northsun, Dennis Cooper, Michael C Ford, Ron Koertge, and many more. Books published: McLife, (was featured twice in February 2006, on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac), American Jesus, 2007, Guernica, revisited, 2014, (was featured once more on Writer's Almanac), How A Civilization Begins, 2022, leaving a tip at the Blue Moon Motel, 2023. A new collection, The Screw City Poems, (poems about people and places in Rockford, IL during the times he lived and worked there: 1995-2002 and 2015-2018) published by Roadside Press, will be released in July 2025. Vargas received his MFA from the University of New Mexico, 2010, where he work shopped his poetry with Joy Harjo. He was recipient of the 2011 Taos Summer Writers’ Conference’s Hispanic Writer Award, was on the faculty of the 2012 10th National Latino Writers Conference and facilitated a workshop at the 2015 Taos Summer Writers’ Conference. He also edited/published The Más Tequila Review from 2009-2015, featuring poets from across the country. His poetry continues to appear in poetry journals and anthologies.
His work history is long and varied. Some of the jobs he’s had since the 1970s: fry and grill cook, women’s shoes salesman, bank employee, gas station attendant, retail sales/clerk (for house paint, men’s clothes, auto service/repair and bookseller), warehouseman, infantry lieutenant, warehouse supervisor, UPS deliveryman, massage therapist, bookstore events coordinator, inbound call center CSR (for several companies.) He is now retired but works part-time processing donated clothing at a local Goodwill and is currently hosting a monthly poetry open mic in Madison (Poetry on Tap@Minocqua Brewing Company: “drink beer and don’t be racist.”) He resides in Wisconsin, near the lake where Otis Redding’s plane crashed. Richard currently resides in Wisconsin, near the lake where Otis Redding’s plane crashed.
Announcing the upcoming collection of all his poems inspired by people and places in Rockford, IL., titled The Screw City Poems. Poetry, creative non-fiction, and fiction depicting life in a small mid-western town during the 1990s from an outsider's point of view. Publication scheduled for July 2025 by Roadside Press.
Upcoming Events
Richard Vargas will be part of a reading celebrating National Poetry Month and Allen Ginsberg's epic poem, Howl. Each poet will read several stanzas from the poem, and then follow up with their own poetry inspired by the passages they just read.
27 ALUNA at Octane
Rockford, IL
Wednesday, April 16, 6 pm
