Luis J. Rodriguez is an Indigenous working-class Chicano writer with 16 multi-genre books, including the bestselling memoir "Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A." He is the founding editor of Tia Chucha Press and co-founder of Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore in the San Fernando Valley. He has spent forty years doing creative writing classes, poetry readings, talks and healing circles in prisons, juvenile lockups, and jails across the United States, Mexico, Central America, South America and parts of Europe. Recently he won a California Arts Council Legacy Fellowship and received the Los Angeles Times' Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement. From 2014 to 2016, he served as L.A.'s Poet Laureate.
