Luis Alberto Urrea

Luis Urrea was born in Tijuana, Mexico, and was listed as an American born abroad. Both of his parents worked in San Diego, and when Urrea was three, the family relocated to San Diego with the hope that it would help the young Urrea recover from tuberculosis. His mother, an American born in Staten Island, encouraged him to write and attend college. He earned his bachelor's degree in writing from University of California at San Diego in 1977 and completed a graduate degree several years later at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He worked briefly as a relief worker in the dump at Tijuana, a location that appears in Into the Beautiful North. Urrea has also said that his then-teenage daughter and her friends inspired some of the voices of Nayeli, Vampi, and Yolo, while his historical novels are based on his great aunt. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago and has published a number of novels, short story collections, and poetry collections, many of which have earned awards and praise. He is a member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame and was a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction.