Dagoberto Gilb

Dagoberto Gilb was born in the city of Los Angeles, his mother a Mexican who crossed the border illegally, and his father a Spanish-speaking Anglo raised in East Los Angeles. They divorced before he began kindergarten. He attended several junior colleges until he transferred to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studied philosophy and religion and graduated with both bachelor's and master's degrees. After that, he began his life as a construction worker, migrating back and forth from Los Angeles and El Paso. A father, he eventually joined the union in Los Angeles; a member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, he became a class-A journeyman carpenter, and his employment for the next twelve years was on high-rise buildings. Gilb's first publication was a small press chapbook out of El Paso, Winners on the Pass Line (1985), which came after he won his first literary prize, the James D. Phelan Award from the San Francisco Foundation. The book's first notice was heard on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" in a review by Alan Cheuse. Gilb went on to earn more recognition, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Texas Institute of Letters' Dobie Paisano Fellowship. He lives in Austin, Texas. He has been a visiting writer at the University of Texas at Austin, University of Wyoming, University of Arizona, Vassar, and Cal State Fresno. He is now a tenured professor in the Creative Writing Program at Texas State University, in San Marcos, Texas.