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Jimmy Santiago Baca was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1952. A winner of the Pushcart Prize and the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award, he has been called an heir to Pablo Neruda and one of the best poets in America today. At the age of twenty-one, however, Baca was illiterate and incarcerated in a maximum-security facility for selling drugs. Five years later, he emerged from prison with a passion for reading and writing poetry.
Baca is the author of A Place to Stand, a memoir, and numerous books of poetry, including Healing Earthquakes, Black Mesa Poetry, Martin and Meditations on the South Valley and Immigrants in Our Own Land. Films, scripts and productions include Bound by Honor (Blood In, Blood Out), Disney Productions, and The Lone Wolf – The Story of Pancho Gonzalez, HBO and Shoelace Productions.
Baca’s vision of himself as a “poet of the people” is carried out in his writing workshops with children and adults at countless elementary, junior high and high schools, colleges, universities, reservations, barrio community centers, white ghettos, housing projects, correctional facilities and prisons from coast to coast.
“I am a witness, not a victim... My role as a witness is to give voice to the voiceless, hope to the hopeless, of which I am one.” - Jimmy Santiago Baca, A Place to Stand. 2001.
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Last updated July 7, 2006.
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