Wittliff Collections hosts celebration of Rolando Hinojosa’s life, works

The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University will hold a literary event celebrating the life and literature of Rolando Hinojosa at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 25.

Hinojosa, who died on April 19, was a pioneer of Chicanx literature and a major literary figure in Texas Literature and American Literature.

The Wittliff is located on the 7th floor of the Alkek Library on the San Marcos Campus. Admission is free.

To celebrate Hinojosa, The Wittliff will feature several literary figures and friends to pay tribute to his life and literature. Featured speakers include Carmen Tafolla, Arturo Madrid, Carmen Boullosa, Nicolás Kanellos, Jaime Chahin, Carmen Boullosa, Mark Liberatore, Manuel Martín-Rodríguez, Rosaura Sánchez, Teresa McKenna, José Limón, Sergio Troncoso and Jaime Armin Mejía. The event will include live music and a screening of a vintage video interview of Hinojosa provided by filmmaker Jesús Salvador Treviño.

Hinojosa’s literary career began in 1973 with the publication of his first novel, Estampas del valle, spanned almost four decades and elevated him to be known as the Dean of Chicanx Literature. Besides authoring numerous essays and short fictional pieces, Hinojosa published 10 novels, a book of narrative poems, a collection of essays, plus an English rendition of Tomás Rivera’s novella, ...Y no se lo tragó la tierra, titled This Migrant Earth.

As an author, Hinojosa established and developed his literary and scholarly career by being experimental and innovative in English and Spanish as well as by publishing his many works using a wide array of literary genres. With a Ph.D. in Spanish, he came to hold the Ellen Clayton Garwood Endowed Chair in English at the University of Texas in Austin until he retired in 2014 at age 85. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate from Texas A&M University.

Hinojosa was the recipient of many literary awards, including Quinto Sol Prize in 1973 for his first novel, Estampas del valle, the prestigious Casa de las Américas prize for best novel in Latin America in 1976 for his second novel, Klail City y sus alrededores, from the Cuban press, Casa de las Américas. He also won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Texas Institute of Letters in 1998, the Texas Literary Festival Bookend Award for lifetime achievement in 2007 and the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award given by the National Book Critics Circle in 2014.

For more information, please contact Steve Davis at (512) 245-9180 or sdavis@txstate.edu.