The Gregg Barrios Precious Words Prize

Each Year, Winning Poet Gets $500 Prize!!

Est. 2017

The “Precious Words Prize” was founded by Gregg Barrios whose generous donation to URBAN-15 provides the source of this prize. Gregg Barrios is a playwright, poet, and journalist. As the books editor of The San Antonio Express-News, in 2001 he began featuring a local poem in every Sunday edition, a tradition in place for over 20 years. Gregg is a longtime contributor to the Los Angeles Times and The Texas Observer. He is 2013 USC-Annenberg Getty Arts Journalism Fellow and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2015. An anthology of his poetry, “My Life is the Poem I Never Wrote: Selected and New Poetry 1969-2021″ is forthcoming from Hansen Poetry Series. He is a 2018 Yale Fellow in Theater Arts.  In addition, Mr. Barrios recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Voices de la Luna, a quarterly Poetry and Literary Arts magazine. The Gregg Barrios Main Stage at Overtime Theater is named in honor of his support for local theater.