Ana Castillo is a celebrated poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist.  Castillo was born and raised in Chicago.   Long considered one of the leading voices to emerge from the Chicana experience, Castillo is a prolific author whose work has been critically acclaimed and widely anthologized in the United States and abroad.

Castillo’s books include the novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters (Bilingual Review Press, 1986; Doubleday, 1992), for which she received the Before Columbia Foundation’s American Book Award in 1987. 

She published Peel My Love Like an Onion (Doubleday) in 1999 and a children’s book My Daughter, My Son, The Eagle, The Dove. In 2005 she published a dramatic work Psst…I have something to tell you, mi amor (Wings Press) and this year The Guardians was published by Random House.

A noted columnist and essayist, she has written for newspapers and magazines across the country on various topics as far ranging as the murder of Tejano singer, Selena; gender roles in the farmworkers movement (Los Angeles Times, 4/20/97); being a mother (Salon, 4/12/99); and feministas turning 50 (oxygen.com).

As a poet, Castillo is the author of several works, including the chapbooks Otro Canto (1977) and The Invitation (1979).  These were followed by several volumes of poetry which include  Women Are Not Roses (Arte Publico, 1984), and My Father Was a Toltec (West End Press, 1988). 

Her other books include the novel So Far From God (Norton, 1993), which earned her both the Carl Sandburg Literary Award in Fiction of 1993 and the Mountains and Plains Bookseller Award of 1994, and a work of non-fiction, Massacre of the Dreamers: Reflections on Mexican-Indian Women in the United States 500 Years After the Conquest (University of New Mexico, 1992).

Castillo, along with Norma Alarcon and others, co-founded the literary magazine Third Woman.  She has since been a contributing editor to Third Woman and Humanizarte magazines.  Castillo’s speaking engagements are extensive and have been internationally sponsored, including the Sorbonne University (1985-1986), and a Germany reading tour (1987) sponsored by the German Association of Americanists.

Castillo earned a B.A. from Northeastern Illinois University in 1975 and later an M.A. degree in Latin American and Caribbean Studies in the Social Science Division at the University of Chicago.

From 1989 to 1990 Castillo was a Dissertation Fellow in the Chicano Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  It was there that she continued her work on a new collection of poetry, I Ask the Impossible (Anchor Books, 2001) and her collection of essays Massacre of the Dreamers. 

From 1989 to 1994, she taught fiction writing and Latina literature at several colleges, including the University of New Mexico, Mills College of Oakland, CA, and Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA. 

Supported partly by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in this period, Castillo finished So Far from God in 1993.  It has been also published in Great Britain, Germany, and elsewhere.  Castillo received a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Bremen, Germany, in 1991.  In 1995, Castillo won a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for creative writing (fiction).

Until recently Ana Castillo  lived in Chicago with her son.  In June 2006 she relocated to her new home in  New Mexico. In addition to the works cited above, She has been profiled and interviewed on National Public Radio and the History Channel, and has been featured along with Sandra Cisneros and Denise Chavez in Vanity Fair (9/94) and Hispanic (3/95).

Her awards include the Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in fiction and poetry. In 1998 she was awarded the Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago. In 2006 she was winner of the Independent Publisher Story Teller of the Year Award. (photo Robert A. Molina)