Lorna Dee Cervantes



Lorna Dee Cervantes (b. August 6, 1954, in San Francisco, California) is an award-winning Chicana, Native American (Chumash), feminist, activist poet who is considered one of the major Chicana poets of the past 40 years. She has been described by Alurista, as "probably the best Chicana poet active today."

Life
Lorna Dee Cervantes was born in 1954 in California. She grew up in San Jose, speaking English exclusively. This was strictly enforced by her parents, who allowed only English to be spoken at home by her and her brother. This was to avoid the racism that was occurring in her community at that time. Lorna Dee Cervantes was an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder until 2007. She considers herself "a Chicana writer, a feminist writer, a political writer" (Cervantes). Her collections of poetry, Emplumada, From the Cable of Genocide, Drive: The First Quartet and Ciento: 100 100-Word Love Poems are held in high esteem and have attracted numerous nominations and awards. She is currently the Regents Lecturer at UC Berkeley, California for the 2011/12 year. In an interview conducted by Sonia V. Gonzalez, the poet states that through writing and publishing, “I was trying to give back that gift that had saved me when I discovered, again, African-American women’s poetry. I was having this vision of some little Chicana in San Antonio [Texas] going, scanning the shelves, like I used to do, scanning the shelves for women’s names, or Spanish surnames, hoping she’ll pull it out, relate to it. So it was intentionally accessible poetry, intended to bridge that gap, that literacy gap.” Cervantes was actively involved in the publication of numerous Chicana/o writers from the 1970s onwards when she produced her own Chicana/o literary journal,MANGO "which was the first to publish Sandra Cisneros, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Alberto Rios, Ray Gonzalez, Ronnie Burk, and Orlando Ramírez [co-editor]. Cervantes and MANGO also championed the early work of writers Gary Soto, José Montoya, José Montalvo, José Antonio Burciaga, and her personal favourite, Luís Omar Salinas"

Education

 * Abraham Lincoln High School, San Jose: School year, 1972
 * San Jose Community College: Associate Arts (high honours), School year, 1976
 * San Jose State University: BA Creative Arts (high honours), School year, 1984
 * UC Santa Cruz: PhD History of Consciousness (all but dissertation), 1984-88

Career

 * Instructor: UC Santa Cruz, August 1985 - May 1986
 * Associate Professor of English: University of Colorado at Boulder, August 1988 - August 2007
 * Visiting Scholar: University of Houston, 1994 - 1995
 * Ethnic Studies Lecturer: San Francisco State University, 2006 - 2007
 * Independent Scholar: Poet, Philosopher, San Francisco Bay Area, 2007 - Present
 * UC Regents Lecturer: UC Berkeley (English Department) August 2011 - Present
 * Cervantes has presented over 500 poetry readings, lectures and performances (Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Vassar, Mt. Holyoke, Princeton, Brown, Cornell.

Recognition

 * Patterson Prize For Poetry
 * Battrick Award For Poetry
 * Latino Book Award
 * Latin American Book Award (Second Place)
 * Denver Book Award (Finalist)
 * Pushcart Prize (x2)
 * California Arts Council Grant for Poetry (x2)
 * Hudson D. Walker Fellowship Award at The Fine Arts Work Center
 * Colorado Poet Laureate (Finalist)
 * Vassar Visiting Writers Award
 * Mexican-American Studies Center Visiting Scholar Award
 * The National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Scholar Award
 * San Jose State University Outstanding Alumnus
 * San Jose Community College Outstanding Alumnus
 * The White House Third Millennium Evening with Poets Laureate Attendee (invited by President and Hillary Clinton as one of the best 100 poets in The United States)
 * Library of Congress Reading (x2)
 * American Book Award (1982)
 * National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grants for Poetry (1979 and 1989)
 * Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Foundation Writer’s Award for Outstanding Chicana Literature (1995)

Publications

 * Ciento: 100 100-Word Love Poems (2011; Wings Press)
 * DRIVE: The First Quartet
 * From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Público Press, 1991)
 * Emplumada (1981; American Book Award).
 * Red Dirt (co-editor), a cross-cultural poetry journal
 * Mango (founder), a literary review
 * Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (eds. Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan, 1994)
 * No More Masks! An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Women Poets (ed. Florence Howe, 1993)
 * After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the Nineties (ed. Ray González, 1992).