City Lights is an independent bookstore-publisher combination in San Francisco, California, that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected titles related to San Francisco culture. It was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin. Both the store and the publishers became widely known following the obscenity trial of Ferlinghetti for publishing Allen Ginsberg's influential collection Howl and Other Poems. Nancy Peters started working there in 1971 and retired as executive director in 2007. In 2001, City Lights was made an official historic landmark. City Lights is located at 261 Columbus Avenue. While formally located in Chinatown, it self-identifies as part of immediately adjacent North Beach.
Gary Anthony Soto is an American poet, novelist, and memoirist.
Philip Levine was an American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for more than thirty years in the English department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well. He served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets from 2000 to 2006, and was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2011–2012.
Marvin Hartley Bell was an American poet and teacher who was the first Poet Laureate of the state of Iowa.
Luis Miguel Valdez is an American playwright, screenwriter, film director and actor. Regarded as the father of Chicano film and playwriting, Valdez is best known for his play Zoot Suit, his movie La Bamba, and his creation of El Teatro Campesino. A pioneer in the Chicano Movement, Valdez broadened the scope of theatre and arts of the Chicano community.
Latino poetry is a branch of American poetry written by poets born or living in the United States who are of Latin American origin or descent and whose roots are tied to the Americas and their languages, cultures, and geography.
Rigoberto González is an American writer and book critic. He is an editor and author of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and bilingual children's books, and self-identifies in his writing as a gay Chicano. His most recent project is Latino Poetry, a Library of America anthology, which gathers verse that spans from the 17th century to the present day. His memoir What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. He is the 2015 recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Publishing Triangle, the 2020 recipient of the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry,and the 2024 recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Luis Javier Rodriguez is an American poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and columnist. He was the 2014 Los Angeles Poet Laureate. Rodriguez is recognized as a major figure in contemporary Chicano literature, identifying himself as a native Xicanx writer. His best-known work, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., received the Carl Sandburg Literary Award and has been controversial on school reading lists for its depictions of gang life.
Chicano poetry is a subgenre of Chicano literature that stems from the cultural consciousness developed in the Chicano Movement. Chicano poetry has its roots in the reclamation of Chicana/o as an identity of empowerment rather than denigration. As a literary field, Chicano poetry emerged in the 1960s and formed its own independent literary current and voice.
Suzanne Lummis is a poet, influential teacher, arts organizer and impresario in Los Angeles. She is associated with the poem noir, as well as the sensibility for which she is a major exponent–a literary incarnation of performance poetry–the Stand-up Poetry of the 80s and 90s. She is also grouped with “The Fresno Poets.”
The Before Columbus Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1976 by Ishmael Reed, "dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of contemporary American multicultural literature". The Foundation makes annual awards for books published in the US during the previous year that make contributions to American multicultural literature.
Lorna Dee Cervantes is an American poet and activist, who is considered one of the greatest figures in Chicano poetry. She has been described by Alurista as "probably the best Chicana poet active today."
Sesshu Foster is an American poet and novelist.
Tim Z. Hernandez is an American writer, poet, and performer. His first poetry collection, Skin Tax (2004), received the 2006 American Book Award, and his debut novel, Breathing, in Dust (2010), was awarded the 2010 Premio Aztlán Literary Prize, and was a finalist for the California Book Award. In 2011, Hernandez was named one of sixteen New American Poets by the Poetry Society of America. In 2014 he received the Colorado Book Award for his poetry collection, Natural Takeover of Small Things, and the 2014 International Latino Book Award for his historical fiction novel, Mañana Means Heaven. In 2018, he received the Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano Letters administered by UC Santa Barbara, and in 2019 he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.
Luis Omar Salinas (1937–2008) was a leading Chicano poet who published a number of well-received collections of poetry, including the Crazy Gypsy, which has been described as "a classic of contemporary and Chicano poetry", I Go Dreaming Serenades, and Afternoon of The Unreal. He was awarded the Stanley Kunitz award by Columbia Magazine for one of his poems, and a General Electric Foundation Award. Salinas is regarded as "one of the founding fathers of Chicano poetry in America," with many of his poems being "canonized in U.S. Hispanic literature."
Francisco Xavier Alarcón was a Chicano poet and educator. He was one of the few Chicano poets to have "gained recognition while writing mostly in Spanish" within the United States. His poems have been also translated into Irish and Swedish. He made many guest appearances at public schools so that he could help inspire and influence young people to write their own poetry especially because he felt that children are "natural poets."
Alejandro Murguía is an American poet, short story writer, and editor. He is known for his writings about the San Francisco's Mission District.
Andrés Montoya was a Chicano poet.
Victor L. Martinez was an American poet and author. He won the 1996 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature for his first novel, Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida.
Carmen Tafolla is an internationally acclaimed Chicana writer from San Antonio, Texas, and a professor emerita of bicultural bilingual studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Tafolla served as the poet laureate of San Antonio from 2012 to 2014, and was named the Poet Laureate of Texas for 2015–16. Tafolla has written more than thirty books, and won multiple literary awards. She is one of the most highly anthologized Chicana authors in the United States, with her work appearing in more than 300 anthologies.
