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Gary Soto
Gary Anthony Soto (born April 12, 1952) is an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. Life and career Soto was born to Mexican-American parents Manuel (1910–1957) and Angie Soto (1924-). In his youth, he worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley. Soto's father died in 1957, when he was five years old. As his family had to struggle to find work, he had little time or encouragement in his studies. Soto notes that in spite of his early academic record, while at high school he found an interest in poetry through writers such as Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Jules Verne, Robert Frost and Thornton Wilder. Soto attended Fresno City College and California State University, Fresno, where he earned his B.A. degree in English in 1974, studying with poet Philip Levine. He did graduate work in poetry writing at the University of California, Irvine, where he was the first Mexican-American to earn a M.F.A. in 1976. He states that he wanted to become a writer in college after disco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Book Festival
The National Book Festival is a literary festival in the United States organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress, founded by Laura Bush and James H. Billington in 2001. Background In 1995 the First Lady of Texas Laura Bush (a former librarian) founded the Texas Book Festival with Mary Margaret Farabee and other volunteers. The goal of the festival was to honor Texas authors, promote the joys of reading, and benefit the state’s public libraries. The first Texas Book Festival took place in November 1996. History As First Lady of the United States, Laura Bush worked with Librarian of Congress James H. Billington to create the National Book Festival. At a news conference announcing the inaugural event Billington said, "We must all try, in every way we can, to send the message that reading is critical to our lives and to the life of our nation." The first National Book Festival took place on September 8, 2001 at the Library of Congress and on the east lawn of the U.S. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Master Of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts administration. It is a graduate degree that typically requires two to three years of postgraduate study after a bachelor's degree, though the term of study varies by country or university. Coursework is primarily of an applied or performing nature, with the program often culminating in a thesis exhibition or performance. The first university to admit students to the degree of Master of Fine Arts was the University of Iowa in 1940. Requirements A candidate for an MFA typically holds a bachelor's degree prior to admission, but many institutions do not require that the candidate's undergraduate major conform with their proposed path of study in the MFA program. Admissions requirements often consist of a sample portfolio of artworks or a perform ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pitt Poetry Series
The ''Pitt Poetry Series'', published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, is one of the largest and best known lists of contemporary American poetry. History The Pitt Poetry Series was established in 1968 by press director Frederick A. Hetzel and press editor Paul Zimmer. The Series received initial funding through the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust and its president Theodore L. Hazlett, via the agency of the International Poetry Forum and its director, Samuel Hazo. From the mid-1970s to the present many volumes have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. During its entire history the Pitt Poetry Series has had several general editors: Paul Zimmer (1968-1978), Ed Ochester (1979-2021), Terrance Hayes (2021 to the present). Poets Poets in the Pitt Series include Sharon Olds, Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, Lawrence Joseph, Jon Anderson, Richard Shelton, Larry Levis, Rob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel John Hazo
Samuel John Hazo (born 19 July 1928) is a poet, playwright, fiction novelist, and the founder and director of the International Poetry Forum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is also McAnulty Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at Duquesne University, where he taught for forty-three years. Early life and education Hazo was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1928 to refugee parents, a Lebanese mother and an Assyrian father from Jerusalem. From 1950 until 1957 Hazo served in the United States Marine Corps, completing his tour as a captain. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree ''magna cum laude'' from the University of Notre Dame, and obtained his Master of Arts degree from Duquesne University, as well as a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh. He and his wife, Mary Anne, have one son, Samuel Hazo Jr., who is an American composer. Life As a young boy, Hazo's mother died and he grew closer to his brother, Robert. Although their father was alive, the pair were taken ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels '' Black Water'' (1992), ''What I Lived For'' (1994), and ''Blonde'' (2000), and her short story collections ''The Wheel of Love'' (1970) and ''Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories'' (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel ''them'' (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019). Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. Since 2016, she has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches short fiction in the spring semesters. Oates was elected to the A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mexican American
Mexican Americans ( es, mexicano-estadounidenses, , or ) are Americans of full or partial Mexican heritage. In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexican Americans were born in the United States, though they make up 53% of the total population of foreign-born Latino Americans and 25% of the total foreign-born population. The United States is home to the second-largest Mexican community in the world (24% of the entire Mexican-origin population of the world), behind only Mexico. Most Mexican Americans reside in the Southwest (over 60% in the states of California and Texas). Many Mexican Americans living in the United States have assimilated into American culture which has made some become less connected with their culture of birth (or of their parents/ grandparents) and sometimes creates an identity crisis. Most Mexican Americans have varying degrees of Indigenous and European ancestry, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2020 census recorded a population of 124,321. Berkeley is home to the oldest campus in the University of California System, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is managed and operated by the university. It also has the Graduate Theological Union, one of the largest religious studies institutions in the world. Berkeley is considered one of the most socially progressive cities in the United States. History Indigenous history The site of today's City of Berkeley was the territo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Farm Workers Of America
The United Farm Workers of America, or more commonly just United Farm Workers (UFW), is a labor union for farmworkers in the United States. It originated from the merger of two workers' rights organizations, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led by organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta. They became allied and transformed from workers' rights organizations into a union as a result of a series of strikes in 1965, when the mostly Filipino farmworkers of the AWOC in Delano, California, initiated a grape strike, and the NFWA went on strike in support. As a result of the commonality in goals and methods, the NFWA and the AWOC formed the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee on August 22, 1966. This organization was accepted into the AFL–CIO in 1972 and changed its name to the United Farm Workers Union. History Founding of the UFW Dolores Huerta grew up in Stockton, California, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of California, Riverside
The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban district of Riverside with a branch campus of in Palm Desert. In 1907, the predecessor to UCR was founded as the UC Citrus Experiment Station, Riverside which pioneered research in biological pest control and the use of growth regulators responsible for extending the citrus growing season in California from four to nine months. Some of the world's most important research collections on citrus diversity and entomology, as well as science fiction and photography, are located at Riverside. UCR's undergraduate College of Letters and Science opened in 1954. The Regents of the University of California declared UCR a general campus of the system in 1959, and graduate students were admitted in 1961. To accommodate an enrollment of 21,000 stud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant university and the founding campus of the University of California system. Its fourteen colleges and schools offer over 350 degree programs and enroll some 31,800 undergraduate and 13,200 graduate students. Berkeley ranks among the world's top universities. A founding member of the Association of American Universities, Berkeley hosts many leading research institutes dedicated to science, engineering, and mathematics. The university founded and maintains close relationships with three national laboratories at Berkeley, Livermore and Los Alamos, and has played a prominent role in many scientific advances, from the Manhattan Project and the discovery of 16 chemical elements to breakthroughs in computer science and genomics. Berkeley is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pablo Neruda
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection ''Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair'' (1924). Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions in various countries during his lifetime and served a term as a Senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When President Gabriel González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in the basement of a house in the port city of Valparaíso, and in 1949 he escaped through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina; he would not retu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Wright (poet)
James Arlington Wright (December 13, 1927 – March 25, 1980) was an American poet. Life James Wright was born and spent his childhood in Martins Ferry, Ohio. His father worked in a glass factory, and his mother in a laundry. Neither parent had received more than an eighth grade education. Wright suffered a nervous breakdown in 1943, and he graduated a year late from high school, in 1946. After graduating from high school, Wright enlisted in the U.S. Army and participated in the occupation of Japan. Following his discharge, he attended Kenyon College on the GI Bill, studied with John Crowe Ransom, and published poems in the Kenyon Review. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1952. That year, Wright married Liberty Kardules, another Martins Ferry native. Wright subsequently spent a year in Vienna on a Fulbright Fellowship, returning to the U.S. where he obtained a master's and a Ph.D. at the University of Washington, studying with Theodore Roethke and Stanley Kunitz. Wright first eme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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