R. A. Villanueva is the author of A Holy Dread, winner of the 2024 Alice James Award, and Reliquaria, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). His work has been featured by the Academy of American Poets and National Public Radio, and appears widely in international publications such as Poetry London and The Poetry Review. His honors include commendations from the Forward Prizes and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

“None of us are safe from death. R.A. Villanueva’s tender new collection confronts this mortal reality by remaining astonishingly present, tuned to the exquisite details of life as a father, spouse, son, friend, and human in the Anthropocene. Apocalypse seems to have arrived, as ‘cusps of ice shelves’ have ‘loosed from southern glaciers,’ the world always ending for each generation. Villanueva fiercely counters the anxieties of news reports by rooting hope in today’s youths, spinning fine silk from a range of influences which include Classical poetry as well as Christianity and scripture. This lyric is uniquely Villanueva’s: it is one’s family that is Holy; here, poems celebrate marriage, witness motherhood, lovingly watch children be themselves at different ages. These poems remind me to cherish my time on earth with loved ones.”
—Diana Khoi Nguyen, author of Root Fractures and Ghost Of

“In A Holy Dread, R. A. Villanueva’s skills of observation are honed and high. Watching children watching one zoo animal being butchered before being fed to another, he reflects: “And what of mercy? Harm / is the norm.” Starlings “swirl in answer // to some unseen danger” and pupils write “murder” instead of “murmuration” in their classroom. Through all these dreads—holy and not—Villanueva also bears fast to what it is that grounds. “What else do we have? I love you more than / all this,” he asks, then answers. However, even such commitment also has a shortness of breath: “You cannot die before I do.” Whatever holy means in this collection is not easy, or easily won. A Holy Dread is a testament to how poetry can explore a territory of fear and hold itself together in form, artistry, allusion and metaphor.”
—Pádraig Ó Tuama, author of Kitchen Hymns and host of Poetry Unbound with On Being Studios