Joseph Rios was born and raised in Fresno county. His first book, Shadowboxing: Poems and Impersonations is forthcoming from Omnidawn. Joseph’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Los Angeles Review, Southern Humanities Review, Huizache, New Border, Poets Responding to SB1070, and Hector Tobar's blog for the Los Angeles Times. He recently was the recipient of the John K. Walsh Residency Fellowship from Notre Dame. He is the founder of Dona Helen's, a artist residency in his Grandfather's longtime home in the Central Valley. He lives at the Brewery in Lincoln Heights.

“'Voice' and 'epic' are words that are distributed loosely in the poetry world. But I use them with all heat that I can muster. Joseph Rios is an original. Only because when you think you have a handle on his work, he moves the target. He does for Xican@ poetics what Jean Toomer’s Cane did for the Harlem Renaissance: He radicalizes it into an undeniable modernity. " -- Willie Perdomo, From the Foreword to The Opening Bell (Achiote Press)