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About the
Author
I was born in Chicago in 1954, the
third child and only daughter in a family of seven children. I
studied at Loyola University of Chicago (B.A. English 1976) and the
University of Iowa (M.F.A. Creative Writing 1978). My books include
a chapbook of poetry, two full-length poetry books, a collection of
stories, a children’s book, and two novels.
The House on Mango Street has sold over two million copies
and is required reading in classrooms across the country, including
elementary, middle, high school, and university-level. Caramelo
was selected as notable book of the year by several journals
including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San
Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, and the Seattle Times. It
was also nominated for the Orange Prize in England. Woman
Hollering Creek was awarded the PEN Center West Award for Best
Fiction of 1991, the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award,
the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the Lannan Foundation Literary
Award. It was also selected as a noteworthy book of the year by The
New York Times and the Library Journal, and nominated Best Book of
Fiction for 1991 by the Los Angeles Times.
In the past I worked as a teacher and counselor to high-school
dropouts, as an artist-in-the-schools where I taught creative
writing at every level except first grade and pre-school, a college
recruiter, an arts administrator, and as a visiting writer at a
number of universities including the University of California,
Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
I currently earn my living by my pen. I live in San Antonio, Texas,
in a violet house filled with many creatures, little and large.
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