Lee Merrill Byrd, novelist and publisher, was born and raised in New Jersey but has spent most of her life in the Southwest. In 1985, with her husband, poet Bobby Byrd, she founded Cinco Puntos Press, a publishing company named after their neighborhood in El Paso, Texas. Cinco Puntos—a publisher of nonfiction, fiction, poetry and children’s literature—is recognized for bringing the multicultural literatures of the American Southwest, the US/Mexico border region and Mexico to a national audience. She’s the author of one short story collection, a novel, and three children’s picture books.