henry 7. reneau, jr.

henry 7. reneau, jr. attended Porterville College, double-majoring in English and Social Science, and UCDavis, double-majoring in English and African/African-American Studies. He is a poet, book reviewer, short story writer, and essayist who has been published in more than 250 journals, magazines and anthologies, among them:

Mandala Literary Journal; Rigorous; Winter Tangerine; LAROLA; Prairie Schooner; Tidal Basin Review; Selfhood: Varieties of Experience (Hawakal Publishers); Blotterature Literary Magazine; RATTLE; Gravel Magazine; Entering: Davis Poetry Book Project Anthology; Transition Magazine; HEArt Online; Pretty Owl Poetry; Degenerates: Voices For Peace; Suisun Valley Review; Storm Cycle, 2013 & 2014 Best of Anthology (Kind of a Hurricane Press); Outrage: A Protest Anthology For Injustice in a Post 9/11 World (Slough Press); Notre Dame Review and Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston (Mutabilis Press).

He writes words of conflagration to awaken the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse illuminated by his affinity for disobedience, like a chambered bullet that commits a felony every day, an immolation that blazes from his heart, phoenix-fluxed red & gold, exploding through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press) and the e-chapbook, physiography of the fittest (Kind of a Hurricane Press), now available from their respective publishers. Additionally, he has self-published a chapbook entitled 13hirteen Levels of Resistance, and his work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Among various awards and honors, he was the 1st place winner of, and simultaneously received an Honorable Mention, in the SN&R Student Poetry Contest for 2008. He was the 2nd place winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize (Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize, 2008). Additionally, he placed 3rd in the 2009 Annual Jack Kerouac Poetry Contest, was an Honorable Mention in the UCDavis Prized Writing for 2009, and a finalist in the 2017 Adelaide Literary Magazine Awards. Most recently, his collection, The Book Of Blue(s) : Tryin' To Make A Dollar Outta' Fifteen Cents, was a finalist for the 2018 Digging Press Chapbook Series. He has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

He has worked in collaboration with noted poet, and biographer, Quincy Troupe, the singer/songwriter, Ray Manzarek, of The Doors, noted artist Milton Bowens, The Toni Passerell Trio in the Davis Annual Jazz & Beat Arts Festival, and as a featured poet in the Weasel Press documentary, “Poetry Is Dead.”

He has appeared as a featured poet at venues as varied as the University of Houston, TX; Da Poetry Lounge, Los Angeles, CA; 100,000 Poets For Change, Houston, TX; the University of California at Davis, CA; California State University, Sacramento, CA; The Sacramento Poetry Center; the Poetry Night Reading Series at the Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA, and as the subject of interviews for the Houston radio station, KPFT Living Arts Interviews, and the UCDavis radio station, KDVS Freeform Radio.