The Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival, established in 2008, is a four-day poetry festival in deep South Texas held concurrently in two countries on a full weekend in April. You don't need to register to submit to our anthology, Boundless. We feed you dinner on Saturday night as part of the Poetry Pachanga--the event that started it all. V.I.P.F. is a program of Art That Heals, Inc., El Zarape Press, Juventud Press, & FlowerSong Press, with sponsorships and welcomes poets from around the world.

This year, we celebrate 19 years of poetry along the borderlands of the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas.

We have a bigger & more exciting program planned for April 2026.

Our first confirmed featured poet is Gustavo Hernandez, with many more to be announced in the coming days/weeks.

Gustavo Hernandez is the author of the poetry collection Flower Grand First (Moon Tide Press, 2021) and Bachelor (FlowerSong Press, 2025). In January 2024, Hernandez was appointed Poet Laureate of Orange County, California. He was born in Jalisco, Mexico, and was raised in Santa Ana, California, where he still resides.

We're asking for your help to make our festival as diverse and affordable as possible.

Some of the events include: a reading for Boundless 2026: The anthology of VIPF, readings from registered poets, workshops, a slam competition, & panel discussions. We will have our annual Poetry Pachanga with dinner and readings and book signings. On Sunday, we close out the festival with a visit to Gloria Anzaldúa’s grave in Hargill on Sunday morning, April 26th.

Much of the festival has been organized by a group of volunteers, financed largely through registration sales. If we are able to raise a little more in advance, this will enable us to support the kind of activities we don’t expect to bring in a lot of revenue, which will help to make VIPF another festival to remember.

Much of the money we are asking for is for travel expenses for our featured guests and supplies for workshops, t-shirts, the publication and marketing of Boundless the anthology, and meals.