Brando Skyhorse

Brando Skyhorse
Born	Echo Park, California
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Stanford University; UC Irvine.
Notable awards	Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction; PEN/Hemingway Award

Brando Skyhorse is a Hispanic/Mexican-American author and winner of the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award and the 2011 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction for his novel The Madonnas of Echo Park. He was a professional book editor prior to publishing this book, which was originally named Amexicans.Skyhorse Publishing is named after him.

Skyhorse was born and raised in Echo Park, California and has degrees from Stanford University and from the MFA Writers' Workshop program at UC Irvine.

Skyhorse shared the story of his complex ethnic identity development in an episode of the Snap Judgment podcast (#807 Born Identity), which was posted on March 24, 2017. In the episode, he indicated that his mother insisted throughout his childhood that both she and he were Native American, and posed herself as a powerful Native advocate, but later admitted that this was not true--that they were both Mexican-American, but that she had adopted a Native identity for herself and her son out of a belief that identity is a choice. Skyhorse indicated in the podcast interview that under his mother's very dominant and at times frightening orders, he continued to claim a Native identity until her death, including on his college application to Stanford. He acknowledges feeling guilty and conflicted about this choice both at the time and at present, but also acknowledges that for an 18-year-old boy to have done otherwise in the confines of the hostile and dangerous dynamic that existed with his mother would have been next to impossible. Skyhorse's story is reflective of the complexity of racial and ethnic identity in the United States and the impact of adults upon the identity development of children.

He currently lives in New Jersey.

...
Wikipedia