Salvadoran-American Authors Who Have Been Trailblazers in U.S. Literature
According to the Pew Research Center, Salvadorans are the 3rd largest Latino group in the U.S, totaling 2.3 million in 2017. The authors have trail-blazed paths in the literary world, capturing major awards and critical acclaim along the way.
Jose B. Gonzalez is the author of the International Latino Book Award Finalists, Toys Made of Rock (2015) and When Love Was Reels (2017). He co-edited (with John S. Christie) one the first major anthologies of Latino literature,, Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature (2006). He is a Fulbright Scholar and has been anthologized in The Norton Introduction to Literature. He has been a contributor to NPR and has been a featured speaker throughout the U.S.
William Archila published The Art of Exile in 2009 and The Gravedigger’s Archaeology in 2015. His poetry is also featured in anthologies including Another City: Writing from Los Angeles (2001), Kalina: Theatre Under My Skin, Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry (2014), and The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States (2017).
Ruben Martinez, born to a Salvadoran mother, published Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail in 2013. He is a journalist, author, and musician.
Claudia Castro Luna is Poet Laureate of Washington State. She is the author of Killing Marías (Two Sylvias Press) and This City, (Floating Bridge Press).
Alexandra Lytton Regalado co-edited Theatre Under My Skin Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry in 2014 and published her poetry collection, Matria, in 2017. Her poems, stories, and non-fiction have been published by The Academy of American Poets, cream city review, Creative Nonfiction, Gulf Coast, The Notre Dame Review, NANO Fiction, Narrative, Passages North, Puerto del Sol, Phoebe, Radar Poetry, The Shallow Ends, Tinderbox Poetry Journal and others.
Javier Zamora is the author of the New York Times Bestseller, Solito (2022). He published his poetry collection, Unaccompanied, in 2017. His chapbook Nueve Años Inmigrantes/Nine Immigrant Years won the 2011 Organic Weapon Arts Contest. His poetry was featured in Best New Poets 2013 and has appeared in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Poetry magazine, the Kenyon Review, the New Republic, and elsewhere.
Leticia Hernandez Linares published Mucha Muchacha, Too Much Girl in 2015 and co-edited The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States in 2017.
Yesika Salgado has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, Univision, Vibe Magazine, Huffington Post, and NPR. She is the author of Corazón, Tesoro, and Hermosa,
Roberto Lovato is the author of Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs and Revolution in the Americas. Lovato has reported on numerous issues—violence, terrorism, the drug war and the refugee crisis—from Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, France and the United States, among other countries.
Carolina Rivera Escamilla — educator, writer, theater actor, and documentarian — is the author of …after… and lives in Los Angeles, California. Born in El Salvador, she went into exile in Canada in the mid 1980s. Rivera Escamilla is the director, writer and producer of the documentary “Manlio Argueta, Poets and Volcanoes,” and a Fellow of the Pen Center USA Rosenthal Foundation Emerging Voices Program.
Cynthia Guardado is Professor of English at Fullerton College, the managing editor of LiveWire, and author of ENDEAVOR, which was published in 2017 by World Stage Press.
Reyes Ramirez is the author of The Book of Wanderers (2022) by University of Arizona Press. He Houstonian, writer, educator, curator, and organizer of Mexican and Salvadoran descent.
Aljandro Varela’s The Town of Babylon is on the 2022 National Book Award longlist. His second book, The People Who Report More Stress, is forthcoming (Astra House, 2023).
Click on the links below and check out how the following authors have also made great contributions to Salvadoran American literature.
