Centrum is pleased to welcome Helena María Viramontes to the faculty of the 2016 Port Townsend Writers’ Conference.

Considered one of Hispanic literature’s most distinguished craftspersons, Viramontes is the author of The Moths and Other Stories and two novels Under the Feet of Jesus and Their Dogs Came With Them.  She has also co-edited with Maria Herrera Sobek, two collections: Chicana (W) rites: On Word and Film and Chicana Creativity and Criticism. A recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the John Dos Passos Award for Literature, and a United States Artist Fellowship, her short stories and essays have been widely anthologized and her writings have been adopted for classroom use and university study.

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Viramontes’ work is the subject of a critical reader titled Rebozos De Palabras edited by Gabrielle Gutierrez y Muhs and published by the University of Arizona Press.  A community organizer and former coordinator of the Los Angeles Latino Writers Association, she is a frequent reader and lecturer in the U. S. and internationally.  She is currently Director of the Cornell University Creative Writing Program, where she has taught for over 20 years, and is completing a draft of her third novel, The Cemetery Boys.

Under the Feet of Jesus, her first novel, follows the life of a thirteen-year-old migrant worker girl, but soon becomes an indictment of corporate agriculture in California and its practices of child labor and pesticide poisoning.

Listen to an interview with KCRW’s Michael Silverblatt about her novel Their Dogs Came with Them.