Alma Luz Villanueva
Born and raised in the San Francisco Mission District, Alma Luz Villanueva is of Yaqui, Spanish, and German ancestry. Her first book of poetry, Bloodroot (1977), attracted considerable critical attention. That same year, her manuscript entitled simply ÒPoemsÓ won the Third Annual Chicano Literary Prize at the University of California at Irvine. VillanuevaÕs autobiographical poem, Mother, May I? (1978), which was long her best-known work, fictionalizes through personalized myth the cyclic changes in a womanÕs life and the joyous emergence into wholeness. Her first novel, The Ultraviolet Sky (1988), received the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. It was re-issued by Anchor Doubleday. Her second novel, Naked Ladies (1994), received the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award. VillanuevaÕs latest novel is LunaÕs California Poppies (2001). Other poetry collections include La Chingada (1985), an epic poem published in English and Spanish, Life Span (1984), and Planet (1993). Planet, which won the Latin American Writers Institute Award in poetry (1994, New York), spotlights such issues as racism, sexual abuse, and poverty. Prior to Vida, VillanuevaÕs latest collection of poetry was Desire (1998). She is also the author of a collectionof short fiction, Weeping Woman: La Llorona and Other Stories (1994). Villanueva, who holds a MFA in Writing from Vermont College at Norwich University, teaches in the low-residency MFA creative writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Currently she is living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and writing.
