Hearts and Hands Creating Community in Violent Times

Luis Rodriguez was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1954 and grew up in Watts and the East Los Angeles area. Involved with gangs at the age of 11, he had lost 25 of his friends by the time he was 18. His autobiographical account, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. (1998), received the Carl Sandburg Award of the Friends of Chicago Public Library. His books of poetry include Trochemoche (1998), winner of the May Miles Award for Literary Excellence; Poems Across the Pavement (1989) and Concrete River (1991) winner of the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence. He lives in San Fernando, CA, where he works with youth at risk. He has written for The Nation, Grand Street, LA Weekly, and Americas Review, among others. Winner of the Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for poetry, Rodriguez is also the founder of Tia Chucha Press, publishing emerging, socially-conscious poets and Tia Chucha, a cafe/cultural center in a low-income, Latino neighborhood of Los AngelesRodriguez, Luis J. is the author of 'Hearts and Hands Creating Community in Violent Times', published 2001 under ISBN 9781583222638 and ISBN 1583222634.