Laura Villareal earned her MFA from Rutgers University-Newark. She is a recipient of the 2018 Key West Literary Seminar Teacher and Librarian Scholarship and The Highlights Foundation's 2018 Laurie Halse Anderson Scholarship. Her chapbook The Cartography of Sleep was published in 2018. ​

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She works on an interview series for F(r)iction called "Writers Talking about Anything But Writing." She is a 2019-2020 National Book Critics Circle Emerging Fellow and a 2020-2021 Stadler Fellow.