It is such a great privilege and honor to receive the Luis Leal Award and brings at least one of my dreams full circle - that my name would be associated with his one day.”īaca jump-started his writing career in the late 1970s by sending three poems - from prison - to Denise Levertov, a poet herself, and the poetry editor at that time for Mother Jones magazine. “I aspired to follow his model in scholarship, compassion, creativity, and commitment, but I soon realized few can do so. Leal was my inspiration,” Baca said of the scholar for whom the award is named. “From the time I starting writing 32 years ago, Mr. He has held a Regents Chair at UC Berkeley, The Wallace Stevens Endowed Chair at Yale University, and The Endowed Hulbert Chair at Colorado College. on Thursday, October 28, in the campus's Corwin Pavilion.īorn in New Mexico of Indio-Mexican descent, Baca is the recipient of several awards and honors, including the Pushcart Prize, the American Book Award for Poetry, the International Hispanic Heritage Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the International Prize, which he received for his novel, A Place to Stand. The award, which is co-sponsored by the Santa Barbara Book Council, was presented at a ceremony at 4 p.m. Now an award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist, Baca is the recipient of UC Santa Barbara's 2010 Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino L iterature. After serving his time, he chose to leave prison not as a hardened criminal, but as a new writer. While incarcerated, however, Baca learned to read and write, and found he had a passion for poetry. Sentenced as a young man to five years in a maximum-security prison, he was well on his way. Jimmy Santiago Baca could easily have pursued a life of crime. Author and Poet Honored with Luis Leal Literature Award
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