Ray Gonzalez received his MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University and is a professor in the English Department. He is the author of ten books of poetry including Faith Run (University of Arizona Press, 2009) and Cool Auditor: Prose Poems (BOA Editions, 2009), Consideration of the Guitar (2005); The Religion of Hands (2005), which received the 2006 Latino Heritage Award for Best Book of Poetry; The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande (2002), a winner of a 2003 Minnesota Book Award; Turtle Pictures (2000), a winner of a 2001 Minnesota Book Award, and The Heat of Arrivals (1996), a winner of a 1997 PEN/Josephine Miles Book Award. He is the author of three books of nonfiction: Renaming the Earth: Personal Essays (University of Arizona Press, 2008), Memory Fever (1999), and The Underground Heart (2002), which received the 2003 Carr P. Collins/Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best Book of Nonfiction. He is also the author of two books of short stories: The Ghost of John Wayne (2001) and Circling the Tortilla Dragon (2002). His poetry has appeared in the 1999, 2000, and 2003 editions of The Best American Poetry. He is the editor of twelve anthologies including Sudden Fiction Latino: Short Short Fiction from the U.S. and Latin America (W.W. Norton, 2010) and No Boundaries: Prose Poems by 24 Poets (2002). He has served as Poetry Editor of The Bloomsbury Review since 1980. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Literature from the Border Regional Library Association in 2003.

Educational Background & Specialties
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Educational Background

  • MFA: Creative Writing, Texas State University, 1995 -

Specialties

  • contemporary American poetry
  • literature of rock and roll music
  • Latin American studies
  • poetry writing
  • prose poetry, flash fiction and nonfiction
  • creative writing
  • U.S. Latino literature
  • creative nonfiction
  • editing and publishing journals and anthologies