Dwaine Rieves practices public health medicine in Washington, DC. A Mississippi native, he graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in 1979 and completed his training in Internal Medicine at Vanderbilt University. In 1985, Rieves began working part-time in the Gay Men's VD Clinic of Whitman Walker Clinic in Washington, DC while also pursuing fellowship training in Critical Care Medicine at the National Institutes of Health and fellowship training in pulmonary medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dwaine Rieves' poems have appeared in numerous journals, including: The Georgia Review, The Sycamore Review, Crazyhorse, River Styx, Chelsea, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, JAMA, and Lancet.

"Thrush at 23" won the 1998 River Styx International Poetry Contest.
In 2002, he was awarded a fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts.
When The Eye Forms won the Tupelo Press Judge's Prize, selected by Carolyn Forché.