HHM 2021 web banner

Acclaimed author and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame Luis Alberto Urrea will be the guest speaker at Cal State San Bernardino’s Hispanic Heritage Month virtual closing celebration on Friday, Oct. 15, from 2-3:30 p.m.

Urrea, who is the best-selling author of 17 books and winner of numerous writing awards for his poetry, fiction and essays, will discuss his identity as a poet, novelist and essayist at the event, which is hosted by the Hispanic Heritage Committee and the President’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Board.

To attend the event, click on the Zoom link.

His newest book, “The House of Broken Angels” is a novel about an American family, which happens to be from Mexico.

Urrea was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. He is the winner of the Edgar Award for Best Short Story (2010), the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction (2004), the American Book Award (1999), and a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (2019). Urrea won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction award and his collection of short stories, “The Water Museum,” was a finalist for the 2016 PEN-Faulkner Award.

According to his website, Urrea was born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother. Urrea is most recognized as a border writer, though he says, “I am more interested in bridges, not borders.”  

Urrea attended the University of California at San Diego, earning an undergraduate degree in writing, and did his graduate studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. After serving as a relief worker in Tijuana, a film extra and columnist-editor-cartoonist for several publications, Urrea moved to Boston where he taught expository writing and fiction workshops at Harvard. He also taught at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, Ill., where he is a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

For more information email hsi@csusb.edu.