01
Born in 1929, Hinojosa-Smith grew up in Mercedes, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley. He attended The University of Texas and received his PhD from the University of Illinois before returning to UT Austin in 1981 as a professor. A writer from a young age, Hinojosa-Smith drew inspiration from his childhood experiences growing up on the Mexican-American border. His highly acclaimed Klail City Death Trip series comprises fifteen novels to date. The first, Sketches of the Valley and Other Works, won the 1973 Premio Quinto Sol, an award for the best fictional work by a Chicano author. In 1976, its sequel, Klail City, won the Premio Casa de las Américas, another prestigious award for Latin American authors.
02
Jan Seale was the 2012 Texas Poet Laureate. She is the author of nine volumes of poetry, the latest being The Parkinson Poems, published by Lamar University Press. She has also authored two books of short fiction, three volumes of nonfiction, and nine children's books. Her work is published nationally in such venues as The Yale Review, Texas Monthly, and Newsday. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing. Seale teaches memoir and creative writing workshops both in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where she lives, and nationally for writing groups and learning centers.
03
Edward Vidaurre's work appears in The Beatest State in the Union: An Anthology of Beat Texas Writers and in Poetry Of Resistance, An Anthology Of Poets Responding To SB 1070 & Xenophobia. Vidaurre has also been published in other anthologies: Arriba Baseball!, and Juventud! and Boundless--the Anthology of the Valley International Poetry Festival, as well as in literary journals, among them: La Bloga's On Line Floricanto--for which he is now an editor, Bordersenses, RiversEdge, Interstice, La Noria Literary Journal, Harbinger Asylum, Left Hand of the Father, Brooklyn & Boyle--a newspaper published in East Los Angeles, his hometown. His first collection of poetry, I Took My Barrio On A Road Trip, (Slough Press) was published in 2013 and his second collection, Insomnia (El Zarape Press), was published in 2014. Conceived in El Salvador and born in Los Angeles, California, in 1973, Vidaurre is the founder of Pasta, Poetry, and Vino--a monthly open mic gathering of artists, poets, and musicians. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He resides in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
04
Erasmo is a freelance journalist and regular contributor to the New York Daily News, where he writes about issues and happenings in the Latino community. His personal essays have appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, The Texas Observer, and a number of anthologies, including “Hecho en Tejas” edited by Dagoberto Gilb, “Fifteen Candles” edited by Adriana Lopez, and “New Worlds: Young Latino Writers” edited by Ilan Stavans. Guerra has received writing fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He is a member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop. Born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, Guerra currently lives and works in New York City.
05
Early in her career, Viola Canales served as a field organizer for the United Farm Workers and an officer in the United States Army, where she oversaw Patriot and Hawk missile systems in West Germany, among other responsibilities and assigments. After graduating from Harvard Law School, she practiced law in Los Angeles (while also serving as a Civil Service Commissioner for the City of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and then headed up the westernmost region of the Small Business Administration under the Clinton Administration. Her book of short stories, Orange Candy Slices and Other Secret Tales, was published by the University of Houston’s Arte Público Press; her novel The Tequila Worm, published by Random House, was designated a Notable Book by the American Library Association, and won its Pura Belpré Medal for Narrative. Her bilingual book of poems The Little Devil & The Rose (El Diabilito y La Rosa) was published in 2014.
06
A product of a Mexican-American family, I have lived most of my life in deep South Texas, where I teach at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley. Recipient of awards from the American Library Association, Texas Institute of Letters and Texas Associated Press, I have written several books, most significantly the Pura Belpré Honor Book The Smoking Mirror.
Additionally, my work has been published in venues including Rattle,
Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Metamorphoses, Translation Review, Concho River Review, Huizache, Journal of Children’s Literature, Asymptote, Eye to the Telescope and Newfound.
07
Cecilia Ballí, a former professor at UT’s Department of Anthropology and a contributor to Harper’s and Texas Monthly, is a writer, journalist, anthropologist, proud tejana and South Texas borderlander. She recently left academia to focus on magazine writing full-time and also does editing and writing consulting. she is a cultural anthropologist and narrative journalistic writer.
08
Author of numerous YA books: Originally from Nuevo Peñitas in South Texas (a suburb of Peñitas Viejo), I now live in Lubbock, TX, with my wife Tina; our sons, Lukas, Mikah, and Jakob, and our daughter Kalyn; our cats Cotton and Gordon (and when she wants, Dottie); and our dogs Sadie and Chito; where I teach at Texas Tech University (in their College of Education).
09
Born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley, author and luche libre aficionado Xavier Garza is a prolific author, artist, and storyteller whose work focuses primarily on his experiences growing up in the small border town of Rio Grande City. Garza has exhibited his art and performed his stories in venues throughout Texas, Arizona and the state of Washington. Garza lives in San Antonio, Texas with his wife Irma and their young son Vincent.
10
Oscar Casares was born and raised in the border town of Brownsville, Texas. He is the author of two noted books, a collection of stories and a new novel, which have earned him fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Copernicus Society of America, and the Texas Institute of Letters. His collection of stories, Brownsville, was selected by American Library Association as a Notable Book of 2004, and earned critical praise from such publications as The New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Entertainment Weekly. His first novel, Amigoland, received a "starred review" from Publishers Weekly, which called it "a winning novel," while Kirkus Reviews described it as "exceptional." A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he now teaches creative writing at the University of Texas in Austin, where he lives with his wife and two young children.