A native of the El Paso/Juárez border, Alicia Gaspar de Alba is a Chicana writer/scholar/activist who uses prose, poetry, and theory for social change. She is a Professor of Chicana/o Studies, English, and Women’s Studies at UCLA, where she also served as the Chair of the Cesar E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies from 2007-2010.

Alicia has published the award-winning novels, Sor Juana’s Second Dream (University of New Mexico Press, 1999), which was named Best Historical Fiction by the Latino Literary Hall of Fame in 2000, and Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders (Arte Publico Press, 2005), which received both the Lambda Literary Foundation Award for Best Lesbian Mystery in 2005 and the Latino Book Award for Best English-language Mystery in 2006. The Spanish translation, Sangre en el desierto: las muertasde Juárez, also won a Latino Book Award for Best Spanish-Language Mystery in 2009. St. Martin’s Press released her most recent historical novel, Calligraphy of the Witch, in Fall 2007. She has also published an award-winning short fiction collection, The Mystery of Survival and Other Stories (Bilingual Press, 1993), and two collections of poetry, Beggar on the Córdoba Bridge (Bilingual Press, 1989) and La Llorona on theLongfellow Bridge: Poetry y otras móvidas (Arte Publico Press, 2003). Alicia’s novels have been translated into Spanish, German, and Italian.

On the academic front, Alicia has published Chicano Art Inside/Outside the Master’s House (University of Texas Press, 1998), a critical study of a mainstream Chicano and Chicana art exhibition that toured the United States between 1990-1993. She is also the editor of Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture and Chicana/o Sexualities (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003).

Alicia is married to the artist Alma Lopez, and they are one of the 18,000 legally married gay and lesbian couples in California.