Richard Yañez, born and raised in El Paso, Texas, directs "Across

Richard Yañez, born and raised in El Paso, Texas, directs "Across the Lines," a series of
community-based writing workshops. A graduate of New Mexico State University and Arizona
State University, he has also been a visiting writer at Antioch College, Colorado College, and
Saint Mary's College (IN), where he was a fellow with the Center for Women's InterCultural
Leadership. Founding director of CLICA (Chicana/o Latina/o Internet Community Alliance), his
fiction has appeared in Mirrors Beneath the Earth: Short Stories by Chicano Writers (Curbstone
Press), Our Working Lives: Short Stories of People and Work (Bottom Dog Press), and was
featured in the Chicano Chapbook Series edited by Gary Soto.
His first book, El Paso del Norte: Stories on the Border, is forthcoming from the University of
Nevada Press. El Paso del Norte is a book of stories rooted in the border region of El Paso,
Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, México. Yañez's narratives investigate real and imaginary borders, as
fluid and untamed as the Rio Grande/Río Bravo, an ever-present image. His Chicano characters
are weighed upon by language, heritage, and memory. Inevitably, the stories are also children of
the border—between countries, cultures, heaven and earth. Currently, he is working on a novel,
Cross Over Water.
E-mail: [email protected]