Alberto Ríos

Alberto Álvaro Ríos (born 1952) is an American author of nine books and chapbooks of poetry, three collections of short stories, and a memoir. He is a Regents' professor of English at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. His work is regularly taught and translated, and has been adapted to dance to both classical and popular music.

Life
Rìos was born in 1952 in Nogales, Arizona, a town straddling the U.S.-Mexican border. Ríos spoke both Spanish and English as a child. His father was born in Mexico and his mother in England. Alberto Ríos' poems echo this multicultural upbringing. As a child, teachers punished him for speaking Spanish in school. He and other bilingual classmates wrote notes in Spanish and left them in the trashcan for each other to find. It was considered "bad" and he forgot how to speak the language for a time. His poem Nani describes an encounter with his Spanish speaking grandmother and his inability to communicate with her. They find other ways to identify with each other, through body language and food.

Ríos started writing in the third grade, although he referred to it as "daydreaming". It was a secret act, like speaking Spanish. He did not think his friends or family would understand him, so he kept his writings hidden in the backs of his school notebooks. He did not share his poems with anyone until high school, where a teacher recognized his talent and introduced him to writers like Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It was also around this time that Ríos recovered his lost Spanish tongue, although the stigma of speaking it remained with him, memories of being "swatted" by his teacher. He would go on to study literature at the University of Arizona, where he graduated in 1974 with his BA and again a year later with a degree in psychology. He studied law for a brief period, but he returned to the University of Arizona to pursue creative writing, where he received his MFA in 1979. That same year he married Lupita Barron. He and his wife currently reside in Chandler, Arizona. They have a son, Joaquin, who is a graduate of the Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law at Arizona State University. Ríos is author of several books of poetry and prose. He started teaching creative writing at Arizona State University in 1981, where he is Regents' Professor of English.

Recognition

 * 2002 finalist for the National Book Award
 * At the request of Governor-elect Janet Napolitano, Ríos wrote and delivered a poem at Arizona's gubernatorial inauguration in 2003.
 * At Governor Napolitano's request, wrote a poem for the visit of President Vicente Fox of Mexico.
 * 2002 recipient of the Western Literature Association's Distinguished Achievement Award
 * Arizona Governor's Arts Award
 * Guggenheim Foundation fellowship
 * National Endowment for the Arts fellowship
 * Walt Whitman Award
 * Outstanding Latino/a Cultural Award in Literary Arts or Publications, AAHHE, 2004
 * Western States Book Award for Fiction
 * six Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and fiction
 * inclusion in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry
 * inclusion in over 175 other national and international literary anthologies
 * selected as a 2005 Historymaker by the Arizona History Society's Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate, at Papago Park, Tempe, Arizona

Poetry
His books of poems include
 * The Dangerous Shirt (Copper Canyon Press, 2009)
 * The Theater of Night (Copper Canyon Press, 2006),
 * The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body( Copper Canyon Press, 2002) which was nominated for the National Book Award,
 * Teodoro Luna's Two Kisses
 * The Lime Orchard Woman
 * The Warrington Poems
 * Five Indiscretions
 * Whispering to Fool the Wind
 * Sleeping on Fists (Dooryard Press, 1981)
 * Elk Heads on the Wall(Mango Publications, 1979)
 * Spring in the Only Place Spring Was

Short Story Collections

 * The Curtain of Trees
 * Pig Cookies
 * The Iguana Killer

Non-fiction

 * Capirotada, a memoir about growing up on the Mexican border