Tim Z. Hernandez

Tim Z. Hernandez (born February 16, 1974) is an American writer, poet, and performer.

Early life

Born in Dinuba, California, Hernandez was raised in the San Joaquin Valley of Central California, where he lived in predominantly farm-worker communities in the agricultural region. His family roots are in Texas, New Mexico, and East Los Angeles. Early in his life, Hernandez's parents were migrant farmworkers, following the seasons across the southwest, including California, Oregon and Wyoming. It was during this time on the road that he developed an interest in travel and stories.

Hernandez once worked for the California Council for the Humanities, where it was his job to travel to rural communities across the stretch of the San Joaquin Valley and listen to stories of migration and struggle. This experience profoundly impacted his life and his writing. He later went on to work for the Colorado Humanities & Center for the Book.

In his adolescent years, Hernandez was immersed in acting as well as visual arts. He participated frequently in school plays and poetry recitation contests since the age of seven. As a teenager, he focused mainly on drawing and painting, exhibiting in his first group show at the age of sixteen, and eventually doing so in galleries and cultural centers across the West Coast. He met the artist Joseph De La Cruz that same year and began an apprenticeship. De La Cruz taught him the basics of applying oil paint to canvas, and eventually helped him land his first solo exhibit by the time he turned eighteen. In 1999, he apprenticed with bay area muralist Juana Alicia on a traditional fresco mural located at the San Francisco International Airport.

In the mid nineties, Hernandez took up writing and performance art full-time, studying poetry and performance at CSU Long Beach with the likes of poets, June Jordan, Li Young Lee, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Margarita Luna Robles, as well as performance artists such Guillermo Gomez-Pena, and Comedia del Arte.

He earned his B.A. degree in Writing & Literature from the first accredited Buddhist institute in the west, Naropa University.^[1] He holds an M.F.A. in Writing & Literature from Bennington College in Vermont. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas El Paso's Bilingual M.F.A. Creative Writing program.

Career

Hernandez's performances have been featured at the Getty Center, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Dixon Experimental Theater in NYC, The Loft Literary Center, Intersection for the Arts, Stanford University, and at the Jack Kerouac School, among other venues. In 2000 he was commissioned by the United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the National Fanny Mae Foundation to write and perform an original play on homelessness and poverty. From 2006 through 2011 he has worked with Poets & Writers Inc. and the California Center for the Book at UCLA, offering writing workshops to marginalized communities across the state of California.

In 1999, a chance meeting with the bay area muralist Juana Alicia landed him another apprenticeship position in San Francisco. In the lineage of Stephen Dimitroff (chief plasterer for the Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera), who was Juana Alicia's teacher, Hernandez studied with the master muralist for five months. The result, a 32 × 25 ft traditional fresco mural on permanent display at the San Francisco International Airport. A week after its completion, a car accident ended his time in the bay area and landed him back in the central valley. Since then, he has been commissioned to paint murals for various organizations and humanitarian endeavors, including groups such as the James Irvine Foundation, the American Friends Service Committee, Univision Radio, and many others.

In 2013, Hernandez's research of the 1948 Los Gatos plane crash culminated in his successful drive to provide a proper monument at the mass grave of the 28 migrant farmworkers who perished nearly nameless, which had inspired the song Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).^[2] He is working on a related non-fiction book, All They Will Call You.^[3]

Awards

• 2014 Colorado Book Award, Poetry for "Natural Takeover of Small Things"
• 2014 International Latino Book Award, Historical Fiction for "Mañana Means Heaven"
• 2011 New American Poets honor, Poetry Society of America
• 2011 El Premio Aztlan Literary Prize for Breathing, In Dust
• 2006 American Book Award for Skin Tax
• 2006 Zora Neal Hurston Award for Skin Tax
• 2003 James Duval Phelan Award, San Francisco Foundation, "Skin Tax"
• 2010 California Book Award Finalist, "Breathing, In Dust"
• 2010 Balcones Prize for Fiction Finalist, "Breathing, In Dust"

Works

Fiction

• Manana Means Heaven (University of Arizona Press, 2013)
• Breathing, In Dust (Texas Tech University Press, 2010)

Poetry

• Skin Tax. Berkeley: Heyday Books. October 2004. ISBN 978-1-890771-93-5. 
• Culture of Flow, (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2012)
• "Natural Takeover of Small Things" (University of Arizona Press, 2013)

Audio CD

• Chile Con Karma: A Brown Lotus Project (Audio CD, recorded at Naropa University studios, 2007)
• The Central Chakrah Project: A Spoken Word Cura, (Audio CD, Arte Americas, 2000)

Anthologies (partial listing)

• New California Voices, Heyday Books. ISBN 978-1-59714-067-6.
• The Devil's Punchbowl, Red Hen Press, 2010
• Stan Yogi, Gayle Mak, Patricia Wakida, ed. (2007). Highway 99: A Literary Journey Through California's Great Central Valley. Great Valley Books/Heyday Books. ISBN 978-1-59714-067-6. 
• Border Senses (Border Senses Press)
• Wet: A Journal of Proper Bathing (University of Miami)
• Black Renaissance Noire (NYU)
• Many Mountains Moving (MMM Press)
• Undocumented: In the Gardens & the Margins (Baksun Books)
• Symposium (Baobab Tree Press)
• Square One (Colorado University)
• Mosaic Voices Anthology (Poppy Lane Publishing)
• Ram’s Tale Anthology ( Fresno City College)
• Flies, Cockroaches, and Poets Anthology ’02 (Chicano Writers & Artists Association)

References

External links

• "ON THE PAGE, ON THE STAGE", Fresno Famous, sylvia savala, November 27, 2006