From an early age, he sought refuge from a troubled home life in local libraries where he discovered the writers who would have a huge impact on his own work: Sapphire, Essex Hemphill, Dorothy Allison, Edmund White, Anaïs Nin, Amy Scholder, John Preston and Audre Lorde.

Reigns graduated from the University of South Florida, where he wrote a bi-monthly column for TLW magazine, with a degree in Creative Writing.

[2] Reigns is a fourteen-time recipient of the Los Angeles County Department of Cultural Affairs' Artist in Residency Grant.

[3] He was elected as West Hollywood's inaugural City Poet for a two-year term beginning in October 2014.

[6] Reigns has cited public libraries and librarians as a major influence on his development as an artist and activist.

In 2004 he organized 'Loving in Fear', an LGBQT literary event in response to Hillsborough County's lack of gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer programming.

[20] Reigns participated in a staged conversation about Keith Haring with Ann Magnuson at The Broad for World AIDS Day 2022.

[50][51] Reigns' poem 'Anaïs Nin Never Bought a Car' was published in Divining Divas: 100 Gay Poets on Their Muses (2012).

"[57] In January 2016, Reigns co-produced an event at Antioch University Santa Barbara, The Allure of Anaïs Nin.

This workshop My Life is Poetry was the first of its kind in the country and resulted in a book of the students' writings edited by Reigns.

[4] Filmmaker Dean Littner made a documentary about the 2013 My Life Is Poetry reading by Reigns' students.

Reigns describes the work as “investigative poetry” as it is based on extensive research, conducted between 2012 and 2020,[63] into Acer’s life and death, including interviews with those who knew him, as it played out against the AIDS hysteria of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In his poetry, Reigns challenges the media narrative of the time, which was that Acer infected his patients deliberately.

[70] In July 2015, Reigns edited 3-Pack Jack, a three book set based on his 2013 curation of the Apt3F performance series at Akbar, Los Angeles.