Acclaimed author Graciela Limón awarded high literary honor

Limón in the Limelight

HOUSTON—Novelist Graciela Limón has been selected to receive the Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature.  The award is presented each year as part of the annual Santa Barbara Book & Author Festival.  With this honor, Limón joins Oscar Hijuelos, Rudolfo Anaya, Denise Chávez, Helena María Viramontes, Alejandro Morales, and Pat Mora as a recipient of the award.

Named after Luis Leal, renowned literary critic of Mexican, Latin American, and Chicano literature, the award is jointly sponsored by the Santa Barbara Book & Author Festival and the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Leal, who is 101 years old, was an early literary scholar; he championed the concept of Chicano literature in the late 1960s.  After many years of teaching at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Leal retired.  Since 1976, Leal has resided in the Santa Barbara area and has taught classes in Chicano Studies at UCSB.  The award’s inception a few years ago was a way for the book festival to expand its outreach to the Latino community in Santa Barbara.

The award ceremony will be held on October 29, 2009 from 4:00-6:00 PM in the Corwin Pavilion at University of California, Santa Barbara where Luis Leal will present the award to Graciela Limón.  She is also expected to read from The River Flows North, her latest novel that LIBRARY JOURNAL called, “Thoughtful reading for anyone who wants socially engaged fiction.”

  GRACIELA LIMÓN is the critically-acclaimed and award-winning author of seven novels: The River Flows North (2009), Left Alive (2005), Erased Faces (2001), The Day of the Moon (1999), Song of the Hummingbird (1996), The Memories of Ana Calderón (1994) and In Search of Bernabé (1993).  In Search of Bernabé, translated and published in Spanish as En busca de Bernabé in 1997, is the recipient of an American Book Award. It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was named a “Notable Book of the Year” by The New York Times Book Review. Limón is Professor Emeritus of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles where she served as a professor of U.S. Latina/o Literature and Chair of the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies.