The Creative Writing Program presents Maceo Montoya in the Winter 2015 Living Writers Series.

Maceo Montoya grew up in Elmira, California. He graduated from Yale University in 2002 and received his Master of Fine Arts in painting from Columbia University in 2006. His paintings, drawings, and prints have been featured in exhibitions and publications throughout the country as well as internationally. Montoya’s first novel, The Scoundrel and the Optimist (Bilingual Review, 2010), was awarded the 2011 International Latino Book Award for “Best First Book” and Latino Stories named him one of its “Top Ten New Latino Writers to Watch.” In 2014, University of New Mexico Press published his second novel, The Deportation of Wopper Barraza, and Copilot Press published Letters to the Poet from His Brother, a hybrid book combining images, prose poems, and essays.

Montoya is an assistant professor in the Chicana/o Studies Department at UC Davis where he teaches the Chicana/o Mural Workshop and courses in Chicano Literature. He is also affiliated with Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer (TANA), a community-based arts organization located in Woodland, CA.

Winter 2015 Living Writers Series:

January 15: Cherrie Moraga, poet/playwright

January 22: Veronica Reyes & Javier Huerta, poets

January 29: Korimar Press, Lorenzo Herrera Y Lozano (publisher) & Maya Chincilla (poet)

February 5: Rigoberto Gonzalez, poet

February 12: Luis Alfaro, performance artist/playwright

February 19: John Jota Leanos, filmmaker

February 26: Anita Hill, attorney

March 5: Maceo Montoya, fiction writer

March 12: student reading

The Living Writers Series is a free and public event held Thursdays, 6:00-7:45 pm in Humanities Lecture Hall 206. Click here for more information, or email ktyamash@ucsc.edu.