Gary Soto
Author and Poet
Biography
Born: Gary Soto, born April 12, 1952 to Mexican-American parents Manuel (1910-1957) and Angie Soto (1957-).
Where he lived: Gary Soto was raised in Fresno, Carlifornia.
Education: As his family had to struggle to find work, he had little time or encouragement in his studies, hence, he was not a good student. Soto notes that in spite of his early academic record, while at high school he found an interest in poetry through writers such as Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Jules Verne, Robert Frost and Thornton Wilder. Soto attended Fresno City College and California State University, Fresno, where he earned his B.A. degree in English in 1974,studying with poet Philip Levine.[1] He did graduate work in poetry writing at the University of California, Irvine, where he was the first Mexican-American to earn a M.F.A. in 1976
Married:He has been married to his wife Carolyn for thirty-three years, and they have a daughter, Mariko, who works as a veterinarian.
Where he lives now: Soto lives in Northern California, dividing his time between Berkeley and Fresno.
Important Life Information:
1. He first start writin when he was Twenty ans a he was a student at Fresno City College, when he discovered an array of contemporary American poets.
2.He is the author of eleven poetry collections for adults, most notably New and Selected Poems, a 1995 finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the National Book Award. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly, Poetry International, and Poetry, which
has honored him with the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Award and by featuring him in the interview series Poets in Person.
3.Soto has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.
4. For ITVS, he produced the film “The Pool Party,” which received the 1993 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Film Excellence. In 1997, because of his advocacy for reading, he was featured as
NBC’s Person-of-the-Week.